


Saving Mr. Malfoy, or A Life in the Ruins

by eilonwy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adventure, Ancient History, Angst and Humor, F/M, Horror, Magic, Magical Artifacts, Muggle Life, Mystery, Paranormal, Romance, Spells & Enchantments, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-09
Updated: 2014-02-09
Packaged: 2018-01-11 18:13:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1176268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eilonwy/pseuds/eilonwy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>April in Paris sounds ideal for a holiday, just what Hermione needs. Her itinerary on paper is neat and tidy, organised, and well rounded; the reality turns out to be quite another thing.</p><p>Written for the 2014 Reverse Challenge at Hawthorn & Vine.</p><p>The art that inspired it is by the very talented Ningloreth.  See it here:  http://dramione.org/viewstory.php?sid=2400&chapter=1</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Paris  
Saturday, 15 April 2006

If life were a romance novel, Hermione decided, there could be no more ideal setting for it than Paris in the spring. Everything was alive with the soft, pale green of new leaves. Tiny buds dotting the branches were opening gradually day by day, their delicate pink and cream blossoms emitting an intoxicating perfume. In the early-morning mist, the landscape outside the hotel window – a sixth-floor, shuttered dormer overlooking the rooftops of the city – was a tapestry of translucent colours amidst the rain-washed greys of angled slate and stone and narrow chimneys. 

However, life was not a romance novel. And besides, she had never been one for delusional fantasies. There was no earthly reason to start now, at the age of twenty-six (twenty-six _and a half_ , a small, inner voice reminded her pointedly), merely because she was still single without even one half-decent prospect to call her own. 

Granted, it would be nice if a man (well-educated, good-looking, clever, kind, and gainfully employed) were in the picture, but she certainly did not need one to complete her life. Hence, this holiday in Paris all on her own, two well-deserved and hard-earned weeks of doing whatever she wanted, whenever and for however long she wanted. She’d booked herself into a charming little hotel in a narrow side street off the Avenue de l’Opéra and had created an itinerary that, on paper, had been wonderfully enticing. Paris was a city that cried out to be explored on foot, and she’d envisioned days of blissful wanderings, stopping whenever and wherever something caught her fancy. 

There would be all the time in the world for browsing the book stalls and little antiques shops; for a stop at a sidewalk café for a steaming bowl of richly fragrant café au lait and a warm, buttered croissant when she felt a bit peckish and needed to refuel; for long, leisurely visits to the Bibliothèque Nationale, where she could read all day long if she wanted to, and to the Louvre, where she could immerse herself in the magnificence of its paintings and sculptures. The Sorbonne beckoned, as did the Musée d’Orsay and the lush beauty and tranquillity of the Tuileries. Paris, Hermione decided, was truly an embarrassment of riches, all of it awaiting her like so many brightly wrapped gifts. She had only to partake. And partake she would. 

The rich aroma of freshly brewed coffee wafted up from the breakfast room downstairs, and, sighing pleasurably, Hermione breathed it in. Outside, the mist was dissolving into clear, bright sunshine. With a small flutter of excitement, she turned from the window and hurried into the en-suite to shower. It was her first full day in the City of Light, and she did not intend to waste a moment of it.

 

*

 

Three days later

Slipping gratefully into a seat at a café with a view of the bustling Place Denfert-Rochereau, Hermione had to admit that having fun was turning out to be rather hard work. Exhausting too. Her natural proclivity for precise and logical organisation warred constantly with her conscious and deliberate attempts at spontaneity, leaving her feeling pulled in several directions and feeling either that she’d failed to make the best use of her time or that she’d done too much and, in the end, had missed the essence of the experience. The depressing conclusion? She was rubbish at letting loose and just enjoying herself. She simply didn’t know how. 

“Un café, s'il vous plait,” she murmured in reply to the waitress’ questioning glance and then pointed to the menu. “Et un sandwich. Fromage fondu sur du pain grillé. Merci.”

“Anglais?” The waitress smiled, and it seemed to Hermione just the slightest bit smug.

She rolled her eyes, laughing lightly. “Is my accent that dreadful? Yes, I am English. I suppose you get lots of Brits here?”

“Oui.” The waitress nodded vigorously. “All the time. These days, there is one, a young gentleman... ’e come ’ere every morning for breakfast. ’E is odd, that one. Always ’e arrive at nine and talk to nobody. And when ’e ’as finish ’is meal, ’e always go there.” She pointed across the square in the direction of a dark green structure with a peaked roof and an open door. In front of it, a steady stream of tourists was queueing. “Every day, comme ca. Like the working of a clock. For two weeks already.” She shrugged. “Très bizarre.”

“What is that place?” Hermione asked, straining to read the sign above the entrance.

“That? It is the Catacombes. You like to go somewhere spooky? Et voilà. You go there.” The waitress cocked her head to one side, winked conspiratorially, and then turned, vanishing into the dimly lit interior of the café before Hermione could ask her anything more.

The Catacombes. It had been on her list, she now recalled – or at least it had been on one of several she’d made – but somehow it had got lost in the shuffle, what with so many other attractions and activities vying for her attention and time. 

A few minutes later, her lunch arrived. Raising the large, white porcelain cup to her lips, she took a thoughtful sip of her coffee, trying to recall what she knew about the place.

A burial ground, of sorts. Very old, too. That was all that initially came to mind. Pulling her pocket guidebook out of her purse, Hermione flipped through the pages until she came to the reference she sought.

 

____

**Les Catacombes de Paris**

Deep beneath the bustling cafés of Montparnasse's Place Denfert-Rochereau lurks the eerie world of the catacombs. Once part of old limestone quarries, the catacombs are a small portion of a 180-plus-mile maze of tunnels; they served as a depository for the disinterred bones of some six million Parisians that overcrowded city cemeteries between 1785 and 1860. This ossuary is not for the skittish. Walking along the low-ceilinged, dimly lit passageways dripping with water, tourists pass bones that are artfully stacked ten feet deep by kind (tibias here, femurs there) and punctuated with vacuous skulls. Markers indicate the origin of each bone stack—those from the old cemetery of the Madeleine may (or may not) include the remains of Marie-Antoinette and Robespierre.  
1 avenue du Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy, 01-43-22-47-63, closed Mon., www.catacombes.paris.fr and www.carnavalet.paris.fr, 8 euros. Metro: Denfert-Rochereau

 

Six million people. Six _million_. Merlin... 

Stunned, Hermione sucked in a breath. The very idea boggled the mind. Ancient cemeteries had been unceremoniously ploughed up, the remains removed and then dumped into miles of dark, dank tunnels. No dignity, no remembrances, nothing but piles upon piles of bones left to rot in rank, dripping water and bleakest obscurity, many of them for more than two hundred years.

A small chill travelled down the back of Hermione’s neck like the touch of a frigid fingertip, and she shivered, images of neatly stacked bones playing before her eyes. Who had they been in life, these people? And who was this Englishman haunting the premises on a daily basis? No tourist in his right mind would spend that much time in such a creepy place, fascinating though it undoubtedly was. He must be an archaeologist, she decided, carrying on some sort of research. 

A thrill of excitement coursed through Hermione. The makings of a mystery beckoned with its siren song, and suddenly, her time in Paris, extraordinary as it had already promised to be, gleamed with an even more inviting lustre. She smiled to herself as she finished off the last of her lunch. She would skip breakfast at the hotel tomorrow morning. Something told her that the meal would be ever so much more interesting right here in Montparnasse.

 

*

 

The following morning was mild but overcast, with the threat of rain. Hermione slipped a small umbrella into her satchel, slung it over her shoulder, and headed out at half past eight. Determined to get to the café before nine, she had decided to splurge and take a taxi; the hotel management arranged it, and the sleek, black car was waiting for her as she stepped out into the street.

Ten minutes later, she was handing the driver his money – rather a steep fare at eight euros, she thought, nettled – and climbing out of the cab, when the first drops began to fall. Clutching her satchel, she began to run, making it to the cover of the café’s generous awning just as the sky opened up and rain began to bucket down in earnest. 

Dropping down into a chair at a table safely away from the dripping canvas of the awning, she took a breath and checked her watch. 8:45. Good. That meant fifteen minutes to dry off, order some breakfast and collect herself, all the while keeping an eye out for a man who would fit the rather vague description the waitress had given her: an Englishman, young, solitary and aloof, taciturn, single-minded and purposeful. Not much to go on, but perhaps she could ask for some physical details as well, if she could manage to come up with a way to do it that wouldn’t seem overly inquisitive. 

The waitress she’d spoken to the day before spotted her and gave a jaunty little wave, approaching with a friendly smile.

“Ah! You ’ave return. What would you like this morning?”

Oh! She hadn’t even thought. Hastily, Hermione consulted the menu.

“A large coffee, please. And... let me see... oh! I’ll have an omelette.”

“Jambon? Fromage? Both?”

“Fromage. That’ll be lovely. Thank you.” 

“Bon.” The waitress paused to jot down the order, turned slightly, and then grinned, cocking her head to one side. “Ah, there, you see?” 

Peering around the waitress’ generous figure, Hermione spotted a man at a table several feet away; his back was to her, and all she could make out for certain was a head of longish, dark-blond hair, a black pullover, jeans, and black trainers. Hermione straightened, sitting taller, and then rose halfway out of her chair, the better to see what the young man was so busy about, hunched over and apparently indifferent to the busy café scene around him. It looked as if he were fiddling with some sort of camera, boxy-looking and fitted out with buttons and apertures she’d never seen on a camera before. And then he turned his head enough that his profile came into view. 

Familiar, she found herself thinking, eerily so. Except... this man wore glasses – plain, black, horn-rimmed glasses – and his hair was all wrong, far darker than it should have been, if... Well, it just couldn’t be. The very idea was ridiculous.

And then she looked again, hard, and drew in an astonished breath. The lofty, patrician profile was one she’d come to know very well over the seven years she had spent at school. _Morgana_. Hair and eyeglasses be damned. It could be nobody else.

Draco Malfoy. 

Or a twin so precisely identical that, apart from the hair and glasses, the two would be virtually indistinguishable. Fairy tales were one thing. Logic reminded Hermione that in the real world, the odds against such a thing happening had to be a billion to one. Besides, the prospect of Malfoy with a doppelgänger was just too disturbing. 

Only one way to be sure, though. This mystery could be solved in about five seconds. She wouldn’t even have to raise her voice.

“Malfoy. Draco Malfoy.”

At the sound of the name, the young man seemed to flinch briefly, but he did not turn around. Her curiosity irretrievably excited now, Hermione stood and made her way over to the young man’s table, planting herself right in front of him, hands on her hips.

He stared straight ahead, seeming to fix his gaze on a point just beyond the perimeter of the café and not acknowledging Hermione at all. Raising his coffee cup to his lips, he took a sip, still determined, apparently, to ignore the young woman standing not two feet away from him. 

The unmitigated rudeness clinched it.

Hermione plopped down in the seat opposite, arms folded, making sure to place herself directly in his line of sight.

“Right. You can stop pretending, Malfoy. I know it’s you.”

At that, he raised his eyes, training them directly on her at last. Their expression was coldly dispassionate. The effect was disconcerting. 

“Bully for you, Granger. You’ve sussed me out. Now run along like a good little girl and piss off.”

Hermione didn’t budge. Instead, she leaned closer. “What are you doing here? And what have you done to your hair? And why in Merlin’s name are you wearing glasses? And what is that thing you’ve got?” She pointed to the object he had wrapped his arms around in an attempt to hide it.

“Not your concern, any of it. Now, if you don’t mind –”

Just then, the waitress arrived with his food and he grew silent. Carefully, she set the plate in front of him and then glanced at Hermione, one eyebrow raised in an unspoken question. Hermione nodded, and a moment later, the waitress reappeared, a second steaming plate in hand. Her expression betrayed the question that she was clearly bursting to ask, but instead, she merely winked at Hermione and then hurried away.

“ _If you don’t mind_ ,” Draco repeated in a low hiss as soon as she had gone, “just take your food and bugger off. What I’m doing here is not your business, nor do I care to make it your business.” With a determined scowl, he stabbed his fork into his own omelette, hacking a bite off and sticking it into his mouth. Hermione found herself ignored once again. 

Well, honestly! If _that_ was how he was going to be... Then again, whatever he was doing, it was obvious that he had something to hide. Something very important, clearly. And for all she knew, maybe something dangerous. Or illegal. More likely illegal, considering this was Malfoy. Well, if that was the case, it was her civic duty to find out what it was and put a stop to it. 

Three bites later, Draco lifted his head, arching an eyebrow in equal parts of surprise and irritation. “Still here, I see. What part of ‘bugger off’ don’t you understand?”

“Look,” she insisted, stubbornly refusing to be deterred, “is everything all right? Are you in some sort of trouble? Because –”

He raised a hand with a small, resigned sigh. “Enough, Granger. Give it a rest, yeah? Just for a minute. Please.”

He’d actually said ‘please.’ Suddenly, Hermione knew she needed to back off. Whatever was going on, it was very serious. She looked more closely at Malfoy now; he was even paler than she’d remembered. There was a waxy pallour to his skin that was faintly alarming, and dark circles under tired eyes. 

Several minutes passed, both of them silently attending to their breakfasts, Hermione casting furtive, curious glances at Draco as she spread jam on her croissant and sipped her coffee. For his part, Draco kept his gaze averted and his expression closed, focusing only on his food. The object he’d been examining was now safely hidden in his lap, covered by a napkin. 

Eventually, of course, the meal came to an end, not one word having been spoken by either of them. Finally, Hermione could stand it no longer. 

“Look, Malfoy, are you going to tell me what’s going on or not?” she burst out, throwing her napkin down on the table.

“I don’t have to tell you anything. And whilst we’re about it, what are _you_ doing here? Did somebody send you to spy on me?” he demanded, his voice a low, controlled growl.

“Spy on you… _what?_ What on earth are you on about? For your information,! I was here for lunch yesterday and the waitress just happened to mention that there was a Brit who’s been here every morning like clockwork for the last two weeks, had breakfast, and then gone to the Catacombes. I was curious –”

“What a surprise.”

Hermione scowled at him briefly and then plunged on. “I was curious to know why somebody would be spending so much time in a place like the Catacombes. Anybody would be! I thought maybe someone was doing research, maybe excavation or cataloguing or studying some of the bones. I never imagined…” Her voice trailed off, and then suddenly, she remembered something else. “And why would anybody be spying on you?”

Draco leaned back in his chair, a small, mirthless ghost of a smile playing about his lips. “If I tell you that, I shall have to tell you everything.” Then all traces of the smile vanished. “Can I trust you, Granger?”

A small shiver coursed down Hermione’s spine suddenly, and she sat up very straight, nodding vigorously. “Yes, of course!”

He drew in a deep, ragged breath, expelling it with measured deliberation. “Right, then," he began quietly. "You know about the mass executions of accused witches and wizards, beginning in the Middle Ages and continuing right through the seventeenth century.”

She nodded once again. Of course she knew. “Horrifying. So many innocent people murdered because of fear and prejudice and ignorance. Even cats! Did you know that thousands of cats were cruelly put to death because they were thought to be witches’ familiars? And then, because there were no cats left to kill the rats, the Plague was able to gain a foothold and it killed millions across Europe! If –”

“Yes, yes,” Draco interrupted with an impatient wave. “Whose story is this, mine or yours? _Listen,_ will you?”

Hermione pressed her lips together, chastened. “Sorry.”

“Anyway, in the sixteenth century, there was an upheaval within the wizarding community here in France. It was at the height of the persecutions, and people were in a panic about being discovered and accused. They began suspecting each other of being untrustworthy, of consorting with Muggles and betraying our secrets. In March of 1527, twenty-eight people were tried, convicted, and executed by the Haute Cour de la Sorcellerie, their Wizengamot. One of them was a relative of mine, a very distant cousin by the name of Lucienne-Odile Malfoi. She was only seventeen. And she died horribly.”

“How?” Hermione asked in a small voice.

“She was burnt at the stake. After they’d put her through a session with a dunking stool and pulled out all her fingernails. Amongst other charming things. See,” he added darkly, “the Grand Inquisitors of the Haute Cour decided that the best way to carry out their dirty business was to do it in plain sight, as it were. That meant mimicking what the Muggles were already doing to their own people as well as ours, those they managed to find, with all the very public witchcraft trials and executions. That way, nobody would suspect anything.” 

Hermione shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself and rocking forward in her chair. “I’m so sorry. It’s truly dreadful, but… I don’t understand. What’s this got to do with the Catacombes?”

Draco shifted in his seat, leaning forward now and fixing her with an intense gaze. “I’ve been seeing things. Having visions, nightmares. Awful stuff. Scary as fuck. It’s her, see. Lucienne. She wants me to find her remains, clear her name. There’s been a black mark on it for nearly five hundred years.”

“Why you? Why now?”

He shrugged. “No idea. I’ve wondered that myself. All I know is, she’s chosen me, and if I don’t try, at least, I’ll never be free of her. I know I have to look here in Paris, but that’s all I know.”

“And of course, the logical place to begin would be the Catacombes,” Hermione said slowly. “Except... hang on... if she was burnt at the stake, what could possibly be left of her bones? Not much, I would guess.” 

“I wondered when that would occur to you. Not too shabby, Granger. Two minutes.” Draco smirked, but his mirth was shallow and brief, fading quickly from his face. “The fact is, she’s actually _said_ to me, ‘find my bones.’ So _something_ of her must have survived the fire. No idea how much or what, exactly; that’s the real hell of it. I’m just assuming that whatever was left of her was buried in a pauper’s grave and could have been dug up eventually and dumped into the Catacombes along with millions of others.” 

_Gods_. What a tragic and truly horrific end his cousin had suffered, and at such a tender age! She should have had decades ahead of her still, years in which to marry, have children, _live._ But all of that had been stripped from her, the pain not only hers but her family’s as well, as helplessly, they watched their child being broken. The wizards in power had been determined to destroy those suspected of having betrayed the community as a whole, and they had spared no humiliation or exercise of torture to do it. They had even withheld from Lucienne-Odile Malfoi the right to a proper burial by her family; it was the final, most basely done affront. That wrong now cried out from the grave for justice. Forcibly swallowing down angry tears that had sprung, unbidden, into her eyes, Hermione took a deep, calming breath and turned back to Draco.

“So – any luck yet? I’m guessing not, if you’ve been at it for two weeks already.”

“Not a thing. But there’s fucking _miles_ of bones in there. I’ve hardly made a dent. And that’s assuming her remains are even _in_ there. Bloody hell, it could take me the rest of my natural life to find what's left of her!”

“And who might be watching you?”

He snorted derisively. “Oh yeah, that. Well, you won’t be surprised to learn that there are still those in the French Ministry who don’t want any dirt raked up about their precious history, and they’ll do anything to see that no scandals are unearthed. Literally, in my case.”

“Hmm. So that explains the glasses and the hair colour. You’re incognito.”

“Brilliant, Granger. You’ve got it in one. And now, I need to go. I’ve wasted enough time as it is.”

Hermione’s face fell. “I hardly think telling me was a waste of time! I could help you!” 

“No. You can’t,” Draco replied gruffly, rising to leave. “Stay out of it, Granger. Like I said before, it doesn’t concern you. I’m better off on my own.”

And with that, he dropped some money on the table, swept the strange device from his lap into his rucksack, and strode off across the square, dodging puddles as rain sluiced off his umbrella. Frowning, Hermione watched him go. She _could_ have helped, she was sure of it. And he certainly didn’t have to be so bloody ungracious. And she still had no idea what that camera-like thing was. She’d forgotten to ask.

Well, all right, then. She would just carry on with her holiday and to hell with Draco Malfoy and his ghost. She had better things to do than worry about either of them.

 

*

 

The next couple of days were busy ones, filled with as many activities as Hermione could squeeze in. Nevertheless, thoughts of Draco and his ghostly cousin insisted upon creeping into her head – generally, at the oddest, most unexpected and least convenient times. 

Case in point: strolling along the Boulevard Saint-Germain in the warm spring sunshine, she came upon the old church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the only thing left of the twelfth-century abbey and its prison that had once stood on that spot. As she placed her hand on its ancient stones, their great age and cool, rough texture against her warm palm told a story of the years of human suffering that such a place must have housed, and the many restless spirits that must surely still live within those walls; such thoughts in turn brought to mind another chill, damp place housing the bones and displaced spirits of the city’s many dead, and the young man who currently searched for a way to give one of them peace and rest.

The association there was not really surprising. It was well known that horrific tortures had been carried out in the abbey’s prison and in the mediaeval pillory on its premises. It would be surprising if such a place were not haunted. But finding herself abruptly reminded of Malfoy’s ghost while in the middle of trying on a lovely frock in the dressing room of a trendy, little boutique was bizarre, to say the least. Gazing at her reflection in the long mirror, the strapless, cream frock with its close-fitting bodice and narrow pencil skirt suddenly faded, and for a moment, she seemed to see the image of a young woman in tatters, sunken-cheeked, staring back beseechingly with huge, mournful eyes. The vision faded after only a moment, and then her own rather glamorous reflection was looking back at her again, wide-eyed and frightened.

Was this what Malfoy had been experiencing? Hermione couldn’t help feeling that it was only the smallest part of the haunting to which he was being subjected. Even so, that hollow-eyed wraith had scared the hell out of her in those brief moments, so it must be that much worse for him. And yet... she had been moved to feelings of deepest pity as well. The urge to help swept over her again, but she forcibly stifled it. He did not want her help – had, in fact, blatantly pushed her away. She would not intrude where she wasn’t wanted. She had her pride.

On the third morning following their breakfast in Montparnasse, everything changed. Hermione awoke in the early hours from a particularly vivid and disturbing dream; it had been confused and very dark, but there was one thing she’d recognised clearly: the face of the same girl, appearing first under inky water that flooded her nose and mouth, choking the life out of her, and then screaming silently amidst shooting flames and black, billowing smoke. Trembling and sickened, Hermione understood two things with sudden clarity. First, the vision in the mirror hadn’t been her imagination. The dream confirmed that. And second, whether Malfoy liked it or not, whether he wanted her help or not, she was involved now. Lucienne-Odile Malfoi herself wished it. 

Sod her pride. He did need her, and she _would_ make him see that. Suddenly, the remainder of her time in Paris – just six days – seemed precious little, but it would have to do. If she could find him, that is. Everything hinged on Malfoy still stopping for breakfast at that same café and continuing to explore the Catacombes. If not, there would be no way she could track him down in time.

In haste, she threw on her clothes, grabbed her satchel, and practically flew down the narrow, spiral staircase, taking it two steps at a time. Luck was on her side, as there was a taxi idling just a few doors down from the hotel’s entrance, having just discharged a passenger at another hotel across the street. 

“Numéro quatre, l'Avenue du Général Leclerc!” she told the driver breathlessly, plopping her bag down on the seat beside her and pulling the car door shut with a bang. “Dépêchez-vous, s'il vous plaît!”

“Keep the shirt on your body, we will get there quickly enough! Toujours à la hâte, les anglais!” the driver muttered, stepping down hard on the gas pedal. The cab lurched forward and then sped towards the Avenue de l’Opéra, joining the streams of traffic surging along at impossible speeds. 

It was now necessary to hang on for dear life. Almost immediately, Hermione regretted asking the driver to hurry. Her first priority, she realised, was to stay alive; finding Malfoy came second. The rear ends of several cars loomed frighteningly close and very large, suddenly, as they careened along a roundabout, and she squeezed her eyes shut, clutching her satchel with a white-knuckled grip.

In eight minutes flat, she found herself standing outside the Café Daguerre once again. It was even nicer in the sunshine, she noted absently, while carefully scanning the café. Many of the outside tables were already occupied by diners enjoying their morning coffee, the lovely spring weather, and people-watching in the square. But none of that mattered now. There was only one person she wanted to see. And he wasn’t there.

Hermione’s heart sank. Had Malfoy stopped coming because he’d given up? She doubted that. The stakes were too high. Maybe he’d moved on to search another location. There were a number of them in the city that might prove fruitful. In the last couple of days, she’d done some reading up on the subject of historic burial sites, specifically underground crypts and excavated ruins, and was amazed that quite a few truly ancient ones were open for public exploration. Surely, he must have decided to try looking elsewhere.

But where? 

She had just turned away, utterly disheartened, when she heard her name being called, or rather, barked out. The speaker was clearly irritated.

A moment later, Draco had caught up with her. And he wasn’t happy. 

“What the bloody hell are you doing here again? Are you following me? Because I told you – this is none of your business. You _are_ spying on me, I knew it!” Angrily, he slammed the flat of his hand down on the nearest table.

“Sssh, you’re making a scene!” Resisting the urge to roll her eyes, she sat down, hugging her satchel to her chest, and merely glared at him. “Don’t be ridiculous, Malfoy!” she hissed. “I am certainly not spying on you! I’ve already told you that. What a perfectly idiotic notion! Trust me, I have better things to do. I came back because I need to talk to you. And I think you just may want to hear what I have to say.”

“Oh, yes?” he replied sullenly, dropping into the seat opposite her with evident reluctance. “Right, then. Spit it out.”

“Okay. Here it is. I believe I have seen her, too. Lucienne Malfoi.”

She paused to allow this potentially explosive piece of information to register. Draco’s reaction was hardly a surprise. There was precisely thirty seconds of silence before he responded, and if anything, his anger was even more palpable now, laced with a generous dose of flinty scepticism.

“Bollocks. You couldn’t have done. Prove it,” he said flatly, his arms crossed.

Hermione had anticipated precisely that response. “All right. She was young, as you said. Her hair was light in colour. It looked like it had been hacked off, maybe with a hatchet or a knife. Whoever did it made a very bad job of it, because the ends were jagged and it was quite short, too, all round her head. She was small and very thin and dirty. She looked as if she hadn’t eaten a proper meal in a long time. There was a smudge or maybe a bruise on her right cheek just below her eye. She was wearing a gown with a fitted bodice and a low-cut neckline with embroidery, I think, but it was badly torn. She was in rags, really.”

She paused to take stock of Draco’s reaction. He stared at her, his mouth having fallen open slightly in shock, his grey eyes very wide. He had gone a chalky white.

“The sleeves. Describe the sleeves,” he said mechanically.

Hermione thought for a moment. “They looked like... like layers of peacock feathers. And I think they must have been quite long once, but they looked like they’d been chopped off at the elbow.”

Her words were met with a stunned silence that seemed to last a very long time. Finally, he spoke. “How? When?” he whispered, his voice sounding as if he were speaking through a mouthful of sawdust.

“I was in a shop, trying on a frock. Nobody else was about; I was alone in the dressing room. Suddenly, instead of myself, I saw her in the mirror. She was just... just... _staring_ at me. She looked so sad. Then she reached out a hand to me. Like this.” Hermione extended her own hand towards him, palm up. “And then, just like that, she was gone, and I saw my own reflection again. It was like smoke, the way she just vanished. The whole thing only lasted a minute, maybe two. And then... then, the next night, I had a really creepy nightmare. Most of it was very fragmented and confusing, but I do remember that she was there. I _saw_ her, Malfoy, really close up. She was being forced down under water and then she was surrounded by flames! She was screaming, but I couldn’t hear her; all I could see was her face. She was in agony.” Hermione shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself as the terrifying image came back to her. “It was horrible!”

“That’s what I see too, again and again. But I don’t understand... She showed herself to _you_. _Why?_ ” he murmured, half to himself.

Hermione leaned forward, reaching out without thinking to lay a hand on his arm. He didn’t move away. “I think she knows I can help, somehow,” she replied. “And she wants me to try, at least. Maybe,” she added quietly, “she doesn’t want you to be alone in this.”

Draco raised his head, fixing her with a gaze filled with such frank, raw anguish that it frightened her. “I see her every night, Granger. Doesn’t matter where I am or what I’m doing. Sometimes, she’s in my dreams, calling to me from the flames or from the blackness of the pond they nearly drowned her in to get her to confess. Other times, she’ll appear in a corner of the room or in a mirror. Once, I woke up to find her clinging to me, nearly smothering me. I never know, you see. There’s never any warning. Well, except for one thing. The smell of –”

“Roses! Isn’t that it?”

He nodded, his eyes widening again.

“I smelt it as well! Both times!” she went on excitedly, clasping her hands together. “I’d forgotten all about that until just now. At the boutique, I didn’t think much of it, because there were so many other scents in the shop, colognes and perfumes and such. But now you mention it, I remember smelling it there and then in my dream, and it was in the air when I woke up as well.” 

Just then, the waitress appeared to take their order, and they fell silent. 

“Café? The English breakfast again for both of you?” she asked genially, looking from Draco to Hermione. 

They nodded as one, and she moved off with a smug little grin. The two young English together, eh? She could have predicted that one a mile off.

As soon as she was gone, Hermione leaned forward eagerly. “So – will you let me help you search? I’m sure there’s some way I can be useful. I’d like to try, anyway!”

“I don’t have much of a choice at this point, do I. My dear, departed cousin has seen to that. Anyway, why not?” He shrugged, quirking a small, tired grin. “Things can’t get much worse.”

“Gosh, thanks,” she snorted. “Trying to _help_ here, remember?”

“Trust me, Granger, I haven’t forgotten. Not that you’d ever let me.”

Their meal arrived just then: two omelettes cooked to perfection, accompanied by a plate of freshly baked croissants, pots of jam and butter, and large, fragrant cups of coffee.

“Well, have you found anything yet? Anything at all?” Hermione asked, spreading a dollop of strawberry jam on her croissant.

Draco shook his head dolefully. “Nothing. Do you _know_ how many people’s remains are in the Catacombes?” 

“Six million,” she replied promptly. 

“Points to you. Hell of a lot worse than a needle in a haystack.”

“Then how in Merlin’s name will you _ever_ find her bones? There must be something –”

“There is. This.” And with that, Draco opened his rucksack and pulled out the square-ish, black object Hermione had seen him holding several days earlier.

“What is it? It doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen. Where did you get it? Is it legal?”

“Steady on! One question at a time. It’s a Spirit Searcher. It detects the presence of spirits – or in this case, the remains of one – by picking up minute traces of their ectoplasm or life essence. Ghostly fingerprints, if you will. It can also summon the dead by providing them with a portal. It’s that sensitive. And quite dangerous as well, obviously, because it relies on the use of some very dark magic that is difficult to reverse. And no, it’s not legal. Quite the contrary. I don’t suppose I need tell you where I got it.”

Indeed not. Prior to the last war, his father had had a private and quite extensive collection of highly illegal magical objects. The Ministry had confiscated virtually all of them, but rumour had it that there were still a few pieces extant and very well hidden. This thing might well have been one of them. Then, too, there was always Knockturn Alley and its infamous dealers in dangerous, black-market magical goods. Borgin and Burke’s would surely trade in objects such as this. Either way, Hermione decided, it was better that she didn’t know. Regardless of where Malfoy had got it, two questions remained. She dropped her voice even further.

“How do you keep people from noticing and asking questions? Because I would think they must do, seeing a thing like that. And... does it actually work?”

Draco nodded grimly. “The answer to your first question is simple. I cast a Glamour over it to make it look like an ordinary, very basic Muggle camera. Does it work? Too well, sometimes. You don’t want to know.”

“But I’ll have to, won’t I, if I’m to help,” Hermione pointed out with eminently calm logic.

“Point taken.” He sighed. “Well, you asked for it, Granger. I did try to keep you out of it. I hope you won’t be sorry.” Wiping his mouth, he tossed the napkin down along with enough money to cover their meals, and then stood, slinging his rucksack over his shoulder. “Come on, enough arsing about. The Catacombes open in five minutes. One more day here and then I intend to expand my search. Finish your coffee and let's –”

Hermione was on her feet even before he'd finished speaking. 

"Ready."

 

*

 

The guidebooks had not exaggerated. Exploring the Catacombes wasn’t for the faint of heart. In fact, it was probably the creepiest place Hermione had ever seen. And yet, for all that, it had been fascinating as well, in a grisly and yet very sad and mournful way.

It was impossible not to think of Dante while descending the narrow, spiral steps of ancient stone, fully nineteen metres down, and then following a long, winding corridor until one reached the stone entryway to the ossuary. There, a sign had proclaimed, “Arrête! C'est ici l'empire de la Mort.”

Draco had leaned in to whisper in her ear, then, as she stared at the words, a chill raising the hairs on the back of her neck. “ _Stop! Here lies the Empire of Death._ ”

She had nodded stiffly, a feeling of dread churning in the pit of her stomach. It would not leave her until well after they’d exited the tunnels that afternoon, finally emerging into blessed sunlight. But before that, there would be hours of slow, halting movement through the halls and caverns that comprised the public viewing areas of the Catacombes, each of them filled with endless walls of bones. Millions of them, all arranged according to type. Dead-eyed skulls, their mouths open wide in a ghastly parody of laughter or a menacing leer, were lined up together in room after room, grinning at them as they’d searched. 

“If she _is_ here – her bones, I mean – then this thing should signal it,” he’d whispered at the start. 

“How?” Hermione had whispered back. She’d been wondering about this and had meant to ask him earlier, over breakfast.

 _Breakfast_. It seemed a very long time ago. Another lifetime ago, almost, nineteen metres overhead in the fresh air and sunshine, where there were people and laughter, colour and movement, and the new green of spring. Life. This place felt stifling, ponderous, crushed beneath centuries of pestilence and pain, violence and sorrow and loss. ‘Shake it off,’ Hermione had told herself. ‘You can do this.’ With an effort, she turned her attention back to Draco.

“Look. It’ll glow green just here, see?” he’d replied, indicating a small, round aperture in the centre of the mechanism. 

“But how will it recognise the bones as hers?” 

At that, Draco had drawn her even further away from the other visitors moving through the tunnels in small knots. “It’s been Spelled to know,” he'd told her very quietly. “The incantation insures it, or so I was promised. And if it’s another spirit trying to get through, well…” He had paused with a frown.

“Well what?” She’d had to ask. His troubled expression had been disconcerting.

“If it’s powerful and determined enough, we won’t be able to stop it. We just have to hope that doesn’t happen,” he’d added ominously. “I told you. This thing is potentially very dangerous. We may end up with a lot more than we bargained for.”

“Will we get any warning if that happens?”

Draco had laughed darkly. “Yeah. It’ll glow red. Red for ‘run like hell.’”

Hours later, after painstaking examinations of what must have been thousands of bones, they had made the arduous climb back up to the surface, emerging into bright, late-afternoon sunshine. 

“I need a drink,” Draco had announced bluntly. “Come on.”

“Isn’t it a bit early?” she’d replied, surprised.

“Fuck that. Look, I won’t twist your arm, Granger. You coming?”

She’d nodded, grateful suddenly for the idea. It was exactly what she’d needed.

And now, gazing out at the rooftops of Paris from her hotel window, the moon a burnished sliver in the black, starry sky, she wondered what lay ahead in the next several days. Tomorrow they would investigate a place she’d never have imagined could be a repository for ancient remains. 

The Louvre.

 

*

 

Sunday, 23 April

They had agreed to meet at nine sharp in the Tuileries, the lovely gardens adjacent to the museum. There was a café there, the Diane, where they could sit under broad, red canvas umbrellas beneath the trees and enjoy the fine weather while having a quick breakfast. There was something especially appealing about the open, blue skies, mild-ish temperatures, and bright sunshine that the last several days had afforded them, and it wasn't because such beautiful weather often alternated with showers at this time of year. Neither of them voiced it, but Hermione found herself craving the fragrant air and the sunlight, and she suspected that Draco did as well.

Savoury breakfast crepes and good, strong coffee were the order of the morning; there had been a fair bit of drinking the afternoon before, carrying over into the early evening hours, and although food had been consumed, it was only incidentally and sporadically. Their dinner, Draco’s in particular, had been mostly liquid. Hermione’s extra-large café au lait and the double espresso that Draco was currently sipping were especially welcome now.

“So… you reckon you’re ready for this? I’ve no clue what might happen in there.” Draco cocked his head in the direction of the majestic former palace, now one of the world’s premiere art museums. 

“Maybe nothing,” Hermione answered, cradling her coffee cup between her palms and gazing at him thoughtfully.

Draco looked back at her impassively. “Maybe nothing and maybe something fucking unspeakable. There’s no way to know until we get stuck in. Sure you want to continue?” 

Ignoring his question, Hermione had one of her own. “You know, there’s a third possibility you haven’t mentioned, and it’s the most important one of all. Maybe something fantastic will happen. What if we actually find Lucienne’s bones today? It’s possible.” Hermione set her cup down and pushed her plate away, looking at him hopefully.

And then quite suddenly, it dawned on her that Draco really didn’t have much faith, if any, in that scenario. 

“You don’t believe we’ll ever find her remains, do you? You’re resigned to failing, to… to being haunted for the rest of your life! Aren’t you!” One look at him confirmed her hunch. There was dejection in his eyes, even as his expression remained carefully neutral and composed. “But why? Come on, Malfoy, you can’t just give up!”

“Look, Granger.” Sudden anger had turned his voice hard. “I’ve agreed to you tagging along only because my dead cousin seems to want you involved. But you’re not my mother and I don’t need a cheering section. You know fuck-all about what’s really at stake here. So just keep your… your _pity_ , or whatever it is you’re feeling, to yourself, yeah?” He stood abruptly. “Let’s go.”

Hermione trailed behind him, a myriad of emotions rising like bile in her throat and making it hard to think, much less reply. Pity? Is that what he thought? Was that all he was capable of imagining she could feel where he was concerned? Nothing could have been further from the truth, though she did feel immense pity for his long-dead relative. For Malfoy, it was more like… well, she didn’t know what it was more like, only that it most certainly was not pity. 

Was it so wrong that she cared? And that she wanted to help if she could? How dare he throw her compassion back in her face as if it were something dirty? They’d actually been getting on, and inexplicably, this had made her happy. Not that she’d actually thought about it before now, but now that she did, she realised it was true. She’d even begun to rather enjoy his company. And the feeling had seemed to be mutual, or so she had thought. Now she knew better. He’d only been tolerating her presence because of the vision and the dream. He couldn’t wait to be rid of her. If she happened to be of some help, good. If not, no great loss. She might as well not be there at all, for all he cared. He could have drunk himself blind the day before and it wouldn’t have made a bloody bit of difference if he’d been in her company at the time or completely alone. 

Well, fine. She was half-tempted to turn right around and leave him to deal with whatever the hell was waiting in the basement of the Louvre all by himself. It would serve him right. But she couldn’t escape thoughts of Lucienne, her young face so delicate and pretty once, now irreparably damaged, and terrible need in her huge, sad eyes.

She couldn’t desert Lucienne, not when the long-dead girl had so clearly reached out to her. Malfoy being a tosser was nothing new. She could deal with it long enough to do what needed to be done here. And if he bothered to say thanks, that would merely be the icing on the cake. She didn’t need his gratitude. The knowledge that she had helped a troubled spirit find some peace after nearly five centuries would be thanks enough.

Hermione hurried to catch up and then marched right past Draco, her chin lifted defiantly and her expression stony. She would indeed keep her feelings to herself. She would be stoic, talking to him as little as possible apart from the essentials. This was about Lucienne, not her ingrate of a cousin.

 

*

 

“What the hell are you playing at, Granger? You’re not about to sit an exam on the history of the Louvre. Quit arsing about and let’s get going!” 

Grumbling in frustration, Hermione reluctantly left off reading the signage at the entrance to the oldest part of the Louvre, the Mediaeval ruins deep underground, and hurried to catch up. Draco was already striding ahead, the Spirit Searcher carefully concealed in his rucksack. 

“Get over yourself, Malfoy,” she bristled, once she’d caught up. “I’m here to help you, remember? I’m choosing to be here, not that you appreciate that in the slightest. So I think you’d best be more civil to me or your cousin might just turn poltergeist and start chucking old stones at your head!” _Which is just what you deserve, you great prat._

“All right, all right, don’t go getting yourself in a strop,” he replied peevishly and then paused, clearing his throat. He looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Look, I’m... I just wanted... oh hell! I’m sorry about earlier. Feeling a bit rubbish was all. Shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”

“Okay. Apology accepted,” Hermione said stiffly. “Shall we get on, then?”

He nodded silently and they walked forward into what amounted to a time capsule dating back to the twelfth century.

Back then, the oldest part of the Louvre had been a fortress consisting of a tower keep, or “donjon,” surrounded by an inner courtyard, high walls and bastions, a deep moat, and then an equally formidable outer wall keeping invaders out. Where they now walked in a carefully laid out path covered in wood planks, moat water would have been many feet over their heads. 

Rough, square-cut stones in weathered shades of grey were fitted together and still presented a show of strength more than eight centuries later. Hermione could only imagine what such a castle would have been like in its heydey: an arsenal that would surely have sent a message to all potential invaders that here was a king whose keep was inviolable.

Discreetly, Draco moved to one side, his back to passing tourists, and withdrew the Spirit Searcher from his bag, checking it over quickly to make sure all was in readiness. Then, making a single pass with his hand over the device, he cast the Glamour that Hermione recognised from the day before, and suddenly, once again, it resembled nothing more extraordinary than a clunky, old Kodak Brownie. 

“Impressive,” she murmured, with a nod towards the transformed Spirit Searcher.

“You saw me do this yesterday. Did I fail to impress sufficiently then?” Draco raised a wryly amused eyebrow as he slipped the rucksack over his shoulder once again.

At that, Hermione merely rolled her eyes and walked on. But once she’d passed him, she couldn’t help a tiny smile.

 

*

 

Several hours later

Disappointingly, there had been nothing, not even a momentary flicker from the device. They had traversed the entire length of the moat, painstakingly doing a sweep of every stone, even the ones that were well out of reach. The power of the Spirit Searcher was allegedly such that it could detect what they sought even up to forty feet away. But thus far, it had revealed nothing. Now they found themselves in the small, circular inner courtyard surrounding the central tower, or donjon. It was near to closing time, and virtually all the other visitors had gone. They were essentially alone. 

“Another day with bugger-all to show for it,” Draco muttered bitterly. “I’m beginning to think I got taken and the spell put on this thing was a load of rubbish. I could’ve passed her bones a thousand times already, for all I know.” He barked out a derisive laugh. “And when that green light does go off, if it ever does, we’ll likely be picking up the bones of a... of a _rat_.” 

Frustratingly, Hermione found herself with nothing constructive or reassuring to say. Casting about for something, anything, that might help, she shrugged and shook her head. “I’m so sorry, Draco. I know how much you were hoping that today would be the day, finally. But look, we haven’t quite finished here, have we? There’s still the Salle St Louis. That’s a very significant space and we haven’t even looked there yet. Let’s –” 

There was a tiny, barely audible click just then, and then a couple of moments later, another. And then another and another, the sounds coming closer together until they sounded like the staccato beat of water dripping incessantly from a leaky faucet. Ten seconds of this and then the pinpoint light flashed scarlet, flickering faintly at first but growing stronger, more insistent.

Suddenly, the small light ceased pulsating and shone steadily. And then something about the quality of the air changed. Now it felt dense, oppressively heavy – strangely _crowded_ , Hermione found herself thinking. In the next moment, three figures materialised, milky and translucent against the old, weathered stones, their forms shimmering slightly around the edges. They were robed and hooded, the long, deep cowls hanging down so that their faces could not be discerned; there was only a black emptiness where their features should have been. And yet, righteous anger emanated from them in malevolent waves, and an expression of severity that brooked no possibility of mercy or compassion. Hermione imagined she could see blackened, dead eyes and cavernous maws in those empty spaces beneath the hoods, and she felt herself shaking. Taking an involuntary step back, she stumbled into Draco. He stood rigid and unblinking, the Spirit Searcher clutched tightly in his hands. All colour had drained from his face.

Then the figures spoke as one, and it was an ugly sound, grating and harsh.

“Vous croyez la tirer, n’est-ce pas? Vous croyez libérer cette salope, ce traître, du châtiment juste qu’elle a fait tomber sur sa tête ?Vous ne la trouverez jamais. Jamais. Jamais. Jamais.” (“You think to take her, do you not? You think to release this slut, this traitor, from the just punishment she brought down upon herself? You will never find her. Never. Never. Never.”)

The apparitions turned then, each facing a different section of the circular room; all three raised sepulchral arms, their long, loose sleeves hanging behind bony, insubstantial hands, index fingers pointed. There was doom in the gesture, a sense of dark inevitability that was chilling.

All at once, there arose a wailing cry that sounded as if it had come from a thousand throats, a keening that seemed to reverberate from all around them. The sound bounced off the circular stone walls and grew louder, until it was impossible to tell which were the screams and which the echoes.

Without thinking, Hermione moved closer to Draco and he put an arm around her, pulling her to him protectively.

“Shit,” he whispered, his mouth dry as dust. “What the f...?”

His question died on his lips, however, because suddenly, there were faces on the walls all around them, each one of them chalk-white and open-mouthed, their empty eyes staring blankly as they screamed. 

The ghastly trio turned and pointed their fingers directly at Draco and Hermione now.

"Ils ne seront jamais libres, aucun d'entre eux! Croyez-vous vraiment que vous allez réussir à votre tâche? Le putain perfide va brûler en enfer comme tous les autres, et à juste titre! Disparaissez tandis que vous pouvez ou vous trouverez votre place parmi eux!" (“They will never be free either, any of them! Do you really suppose you will succeed in your task? The treacherous whore will burn in hell just as all of them do, and rightly so! Get you gone while you may or you will take your place amongst them!”)

And just like that, the figures faded into nothingness, and all the faces on the walls melted into the stones as if they had never been there at all. The echoes of their mournful cries stopped just as abruptly, swallowed by a ponderous silence as oppressive as the spirit-choked air had been. 

Once again, they were alone. 

Looking quickly around in a barely controlled panic, Draco scanned the outer walkway beyond the room they were in. Only a scant handful of tourists remained, and they were behaving as if they’d seen and heard absolutely nothing of what had just happened. And then one of the guards poked his head in.

“Nous allons fermer momentanément. S'il vous plaît, faites votre chemin vers la sortie.” (“We will be closing momentarily. Please make your way to the exit.”)

“Oui, bien sûr. Nous partons maintenant,” Draco murmured, giving the guard a nod. “Come on, Granger. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Taking her hand firmly, he began to walk with rapid, purposeful strides, practically dragging her along.

Only when they were outside in the fresh air did he stop, and then he drew in a deep, shuddering breath.

“Fucking hell! I’ve raised spirits by mistake before in the past few weeks, but never anything like that!” He raked a hand through his hair in agitation, his face still ashen with shock, and his palms, Hermione noted as she carefully withdrew her hand from his at last, still sweaty.

“I was scared to death,” she whispered, clearing her throat to swallow down the quaver. “I haven’t felt that way in a very long time. Not since... well...” Pausing, she looked away, remembering. “Not in a very long time.”

Draco seemed to know what she’d meant. He said nothing, only nodding by way of reply. 

There was an awkward silence for a moment. Then, summoning a briskness she didn’t really feel, she told him, “Look. We’ve a lot to talk over. And I don’t know about you, but I’m famished. We haven’t eaten all day. Let’s go have dinner somewhere, okay? I bet it’ll do us both a lot of good.”

Surely, she reasoned, there would be a quiet, cosy restaurant nearby that would prove soothing and restorative to their frayed nerves and empty stomachs. Looping her arm through his, Hermione started them off walking with no particular destination in mind, and Draco offered no resistance.

Before long, they came upon an unassuming little place on a narrow side street, L’Epi d’Or. The entrance was framed in old wood, the interior dimly lit and quite comfortable-looking. Richly textured wood panelling illuminated by old-fashioned, blown-glass lamps lent the place real warmth, its distinctive ambiance enhanced by small, framed paintings and hand-painted china plates. Candles on every table flickered with a soft, yellow light and the air was replete with the most tantalising aromas. Best of all, nobody seemed to be paying the slightest attention to anyone else’s business.

“Oh, look, Malfoy. This place would be perfect. Come on,” Hermione exclaimed, giving Draco’s arm a gentle tug. She’d spotted a very private table in the corner that would suit admirably.

The corner table was available and soon they were seated in welcome semi-darkness and privacy. With only the flickering candlelight illuminating their faces in an eerie play of light and shadow, the mystery that enveloped them now seemed even more palpable somehow.

“Wine,” Draco said suddenly, turning to Hermione. “I could do with some. More than just some, actually. You?”

“Oh yes, please!” she agreed avidly. “Whatever you like.”

They ordered a bottle of smooth, ruby-red Malbec along with their steaks au poivre and sat back, beginning to decompress at last as they waited for their dinner. 

“What now?” Hermione asked finally. “I mean, of course, we’ve got to go back, don’t we. It’s pretty obvious that the Louvre is the right place. Or else, we wouldn’t have seen... “ She looked around hastily, dropping her voice. “We wouldn’t have seen... you know... what we saw.”

“What we saw,” Draco echoed. “Yeah. Can you believe it? That was seriously fucked up. If they think they’re going to scare me away, though...”

“Oh no! They can’t. I mean, they won’t. You’ve come too far!”

“What about you, then? Have you had enough? I wouldn’t blame you if you did, you know,” he added quietly, sliding his glasses off and laying them on the table. Pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers, he sighed, exhausted.

“I’m not giving up, and neither are you,” she replied staunchly. “Here, have some wine.” Pouring out two glasses, she handed one to him and raised her own. “To... to finding Lucienne and putting this whole thing to rest once and for all! Right?”

The impassioned sincerity in her large, brown eyes came as a surprise that Draco hadn’t been prepared for. Things couldn’t have been scarier or more dire, and definitely not any more dangerous than they had now become, and yet, Granger was still here and apparently imperturbable. A lump seemed suddenly to materialise in his throat and he found it difficult to swallow it away.

“Right,” he said at last, collecting himself and then raising his glass, touching it to hers. The crystal made a fine, bell-like sound. “Problem is, assuming we do find her remains, how do we get at them, now that we’ve got Fluffy after us?”

Hermione’s eyes widened and she clapped a hand over her mouth, unable to stifle a momentary giggle. It had been ages since she’d thought of the huge, three-headed mastiff that had lived at Hogwarts. It was an apt analogy, though. On the more serious side, of course, the problem was all too real. How in Merlin’s name _would_ they get past the three malignant spirits? It seemed they still had a great deal of power at their command, and they were determined to use it to prevent what they perceived as a miscarriage of the justice they had handed down so many centuries earlier.

“What about a spell to make us invisible? Or an Invisibility Cloak! You don’t happen to have one to hand, do you?” Hermione looked at Draco hopefully.

He shook his head. “Sorry, no. And it would take too long to get hold of one. We need to act now, whilst the trail is hot and before those spirits make it impossible for us to ever find Lucienne. And anyway, being invisible wouldn’t offer any real protection, not from what's after us. On the other hand,” he mused slowly, the corners of his mouth rising in a smug little grin, “what about a really powerful Shield Charm? That should do it, what d’you reckon?”

 _Protego Maxima. Fianto Duri. Repello Inimicum._ The incantations were still so familiar, though it had been a long time – years, in fact – since she’d needed to say them in self-defence. Suddenly, thoughts of that last time came rushing back, and for just a moment, she squeezed her eyes shut against the painful memories. Then she nodded. Yes, a Shield Charm would do very well indeed.

Draco had been watching her carefully, and now his eyes narrowed slightly. But once again, he said nothing. Instead he speared a piece of steak and chewed in thoughtful silence.

At last, the meal drew to a satisfying close. Draco pulled out his wallet and prepared to settle the bill. Not for the first time, Hermione found herself surprised that he was handling Muggle currency with such apparent ease. 

He shrugged. “Had to learn, didn’t I, when I knew I would be coming here to do this. No choice. Anyway, I reckon it was about time I learnt to take care of myself in their world. There are times when it comes in very useful, don’t you agree?”

As it happened, Hermione could not have agreed more.

The bill was paid, and both of them rose to leave. Suddenly, now that the meal was over, Draco looked exhausted. More than that, though, he seemed distracted, withdrawn. 

“What is it?” she asked as they left the restaurant and began to walk along the darkened avenue, lit up now with street lamps and neon.

He shook his head. “Nothing.”

“I don’t believe you, Malfoy. What’s going on?”

“I was just... I was just thinking about what happened this afternoon, remembering the faces, if you could call them that, of those evil, twisted things. And all those screaming heads. All those people the Inquisitors sent to their deaths.” He shivered involuntarily, hugging himself in an effort to ward off the chill raising the hairs on the back of his neck. 

“Where are you staying?” Hermione asked abruptly, an idea taking shape. “Is it far?”

Still in the grip of very disturbing thoughts, Draco didn’t reply at first. Then, he seemed to awaken, looking at her quizzically. “Why?”

“Come back to my hotel and stay with me tonight,” she offered. “To be honest, I really don’t want to be alone now. Too creepy. I’ll have nightmares, I’m sure of it. I could use the company. What about you?”

“Thanks all the same, Granger, but I’ll be all right. No worries.” Draco shook his head slowly as he pulled on his jacket, but his eyes told a different story. 

“Well, I won't be. And anyway, look at you. You’re exhausted. You need sleep if you’re going to face whatever we might be facing tomorrow. We’ll both sleep a lot better if we’re not alone tonight. There’s a divan in my room you can use. I’m sure it’s quite comfy. Look, I won’t take no for an answer. Okay?” 

It seemed there was no arguing with Granger once her mind was made up. Stubborn and just as bossy as ever, wasn’t she. Ah well, there could be worse things than a night with her. Much worse, a small, inner voice observed pointedly, and Draco could feel his cheeks burn in the darkness. 

He grinned wearily. “Okay.”

 

*

 

Her room was on the top floor of the hotel – six flights up, as Draco was to discover upon arrival. There were two options for getting there: one was to use the absurdly narrow lift, which, he had remarked under his breath, was about the size of a coffin and must have dated back to when lifts were first used, whenever that was. 

“1865 here in Paris,” Hermione had interjected promptly. At his look of amazement, she’d shrugged. “What? I asked!”

“’Course you did.” He’d given a quick snort of laughter. “Why am I not surprised?”

The other option was to climb a seemingly endless winding staircase the full six storeys. Given his inbred scepticism regarding Muggle mechanical devices, especially ones that were one hundred and forty-one years old and prone to jerking and shuddering laboriously as they ascended, or so Hermione informed him (he could only assume the same thing happened on the way down, but worse), Draco had decided to opt for the stairs, and so they had trudged up flight after flight. 

Hermione had switched on the lamps as they walked in and now Draco surveyed her room. White walls, old ceiling beams also painted white, a small chest of drawers on one side and a desk on the other, all in antique white. The bed in between looked decent enough, though its small size confirmed what he’d always suspected: the French were constitutionally inferior to the English. Must be the vast quantities of coffee they drank. Whoever slept in such a bed would have to be short, and, if he or she had a bed partner, fairly thin as well. A recessed dormer window set into the sharply angled eaves gave a pleasing view of the Paris rooftops, he found, sauntering closer and peering out. All in all, it seemed acceptably clean and the furnishings were tasteful, though how even a minimally discerning person could be expected to manage the most basic needs properly in such a space was beyond him. Not exactly the Ritz, he decided with an inward smirk. Hardly bigger than house-elves’ quarters.

He refrained from pointing that out, though it took some effort.

“You can sleep there.” Hermione pointed to something that looked like the stunted offspring of a sofa and an even smaller bed. Covered in a nubby, white bedspread and several velveteen throw cushions, it was tucked in directly under the eaves. 

“Don’t you offer your guest the good bed?” he teased. “After all, you invited me here.” 

She opened her mouth to reply, but he raised a hand. “Joking, Granger. It’s okay. Really. I’ll be fine on the… the whatever-it-is.” And to prove it, he sat down on the narrow divan, bouncing up and down a few times and patting it. To be generous, it was… _firm._ And meant for a child, clearly, judging by the dimensions. “Very nice.”

Relieved, Hermione gave him a quick smile. “The en-suite is over there,” she told him, pointing to a door they’d passed in the narrow entryway. “There’s a tub and a shower. Though I should warn you, it’s tiny. I’ve got used to it.”

“This whole place was built for midgets!” he muttered under his breath as she turned away to get herself settled.

“Anyway, you can go first,” she continued, her back to him as she shrugged out of her jacket and kicked off her shoes. “There are extra towels in there if you want to have a bath or a shower.” 

It was a gracious offer, so Draco ventured into the bathroom with the toothbrush procured from the desk downstairs, opening the door carefully and peering inside. “Tiny” was an understatement. 

A compact marble sink on the immediate left-hand wall jutted out over a portion of the bathtub, housed neatly beneath. A single misstep while washing and one would wind up in the tub. The narrow glass partition at the shower end provided no privacy for the bather, much less any real protection for the floor. Tucked into a small corner opposite the tub was the toilet. Oddly, a portable hairdryer was affixed to the wall just above, suggesting an efficiency of activity that bordered on the ridiculous. In the end, he could barely turn around in the cramped space.

“You’ve got used to this, eh? And you’ve been staying here how long?” he called out after a quick shower, naked and still dripping and a towel draped low on his hips. “You’re a better man than I am, Granger. Somebody should give you a medal!”

There was a small giggle, and then a light knock on the door of the loo. “Done yet? I’d like to get in there sometime tonight.”

“I’ll have you know that was probably the fastest shower in the history of showers, or at least the fastest one I’ve ever had,” he replied loftily and then opened the door. Squeezing in past him, Hermione’s eyes lingered on him for a few long seconds and then she shut the door quietly behind her. 

Drying off, he Transfigured one of the towels into a pair of pyjama trousers and slipped them on, his thoughts still wrapped around that look she’d just given him. Then, a wave of fatigue setting in, he attempted to make himself comfortable on the divan, positioning himself first one way and then another. Always, the sloping eaves were in the way, and he cracked his head painfully several times before he finally gave up. Oh hell, never mind. Surely, Hermione wouldn’t care if he stretched out on her bed, at least while she was otherwise occupied. And so he did, closing his eyes and letting images of the day’s events return, frame by frame.

It had been a long and difficult day, disturbing and frightening in ways he had not remotely anticipated. What would happen tomorrow? Would they succeed in finding Lucienne’s remains at last? Or would there be yet more failure and disappointment? Or worse, he wondered. What was ahead could be far worse than mere failure. The risks had increased a hundredfold with the appearance of the three malevolent spirits. And he was no longer in it alone. Now there was Granger to worry about as well. Maybe it had been a mistake to allow her to help, no matter what she and his ghostly cousin had desired. Maybe he should not have listened, simply trusting his gut instead. At least he wouldn’t have her fate in his hands, and even worse, on his conscience. 

Consumed with such gloomy thoughts, he didn’t notice when the door to the en-suite opened and Hermione emerged. But his nose told him even before his eyes did. Warm, steamy air, perfumed with all manner of pleasantly fruity essences, wafted out of the loo in an inviting cloud. And then Hermione herself came out, towelling her hair off as she walked. She wore a thin, little sleep tee and baggy pyjama trousers and her feet were bare. 

It was almost as if, for the moment, she had utterly forgotten that he was there, that she’d asked him to stay, because when she looked up, her hair sticking out wildly from the vigorous towelling, a look of momentary horror and embarrassment crossed her face. Then she grinned sheepishly, her cheeks pink, and turned away to find her hairbrush.

“Comfortable?” she asked presently, perched cross-legged at the foot of the bed, still-damp hair framing her face in fragrant curls and waves.

“Quite,” he replied with a lazy grin, folding his arms behind his head and stretching luxuriantly. “Actually, I was hoping perhaps you might consider sharing. In the interests of good manners and generosity and the basic kindness of your heart. Not to mention that thing over there is bloody hard and narrow and I keep bumping my head on the wall. What do you say, Granger? Take pity on me, yeah?”

Hermione rolled her eyes, her lips pursed in amusement. “Not a chance. You’ll be fine on the divan.” 

That hadn’t been the answer he’d hoped for, and he looked at her slightly askance. “Does that mean you want me to get up? Now?”

“Actually, yes. I’m awfully tired. I’d think I’d like to go to sleep soon, if you don’t mind.”

“I bet I’ll wake up with a monstrous backache. Oh well,” he sighed. “On your own head be it. ‘Night, Granger.” And with that, he hoisted himself to his feet. 

Tilting her head in the direction of the chest of drawers, Hermione grinned, and Draco dutifully went to investigate. There, he found extra blankets and pillows, to which he helped himself with theatrical dejection. This only earned him additional laughter from Hermione.

“Ever make a bed before, Malfoy?” she couldn’t resist asking.

“I am fully capable of making a bloody bed,” he informed her, miffed. “If I must.”

“Popping your bed-making cherry, are we?” More giggles.

He ignored that one altogether. Damned woman. But he couldn’t completely stifle a small grin, try as he might. 

His efforts produced a hideously lumpy result, which Hermione was tactful enough not to point out. Eventually, though, the divan was made up as well as he could manage it, and he lowered himself into it with care, drawing up the covers with a deep sigh. 

“Well, goodnight, Draco,” Hermione said softly, and then, with a small click, the room was plunged into darkness. “Thank you for staying with me tonight.”

Below, on the street, the sounds of Paris getting a second wind on a Sunday night could be heard: the occasional car horn blaring, a large lorry passing, the laughter and chatter of people on their way home from a late supper or a film, strollers enjoying the balmy night air.

As tired as he was, now that he was finally lying in bed, Draco felt wide awake. Maybe the hot shower, which he’d hoped would relax him even further, had had the opposite effect. In any event, he found himself staring at the ceiling, watching the play of light and shadow overhead and trying not to think about what had so horrified him earlier in the day.

“Granger?” He waited for a moment. “Hermione?”

“Mmm?” Her voice was very drowsy now.

“Tonight at dinner... and earlier today, as well... you were thinking about the war, weren’t you...”

There was silence for a minute or two, and Draco wondered if she’d fallen asleep. He was almost startled when she finally answered.

“Yes. Honestly, I haven’t been this scared since then. It’s hard not to think back to all that. Impossible, really. Haven’t you?”

He had to admit that he had – that in fact, memories of the corrosive fear he’d suffered during the war had been rising in his throat like bile with each ghostly encounter. But today’s had been the worst yet. 

Draco turned onto his side, cupping his cheek in the palm of his hand. “And the Shield Charm… you’ve cast it before, haven’t you. I could see it in your face when I suggested it. Not everybody can do it, you know. Bad memories?”

Hermione laughed grimly. “You could say that. If using it against Death Eaters counts as a bad memory.”

Taken aback at the unvarnished honesty of her answer, Draco fell silent. He ruminated for a few moments.

“Granger, look…” he began hesitantly, a little while later. “There’s something I need to say. About back then, I mean. I’m… I’m sorry. For not helping you whilst my aunt was… well, for not helping you. For not doing anything to stop her.”

There was a sharp intake of breath from the slight figure curled up in the bed, and then Draco could hear her exhale slowly as she gathered herself.

“Listen, Malfoy,” she said at last, very quietly. “There was nothing you could have done. You’d have ended up horribly cursed at the very least, or even more likely, dead. We both know that.”

“Thanks…” he whispered, swallowing hard. Somehow, her generosity of spirit was even more difficult to take than if she'd been openly angry or bitter. He shivered at the memory of Bellatrix' mad eyes and that leering smile and pulled the covers closer. “She was crazy, my aunt. Completely round the twist. I hated watching her hurt you. Hated all of it. You don’t know, Hermione… I saw so much… They _made_ me watch...”

“You can tell me about it, if you want.” Her voice was gentle now, subdued.

“I’d like to, I think. But not tonight. I reckon we’ve both had enough scary, disturbing shit for one day.” Lying back on his pillow, he stared once again at the shadows flitting across the ceiling and closed his eyes, hoping to see nothing at all and wishing, suddenly, that he could be holding Hermione. Bloody hell. He’d opened a big, ugly Pandora’s box just now, because he’d needed to make himself feel better. She hadn’t needed to be reminded of all that, not now, not any more than she already was. Stupid. Stupid and utterly pointless.

In the other bed, Hermione lay curled up on her side, hugging a spare pillow tightly and trying to banish a whole host of spectres, her own and Malfoy’s. The pillow was wholly inadequate as a comfort. Just now, what she really needed was something else. 

Just before dawn, as the first thin, grey light of day began to lift the shadows, the figure of a young woman appeared in a darkened corner of the room. In rags, her fair hair chopped off and her face and slender body ravaged, she stood, wide-eyed and silent, waiting. They would sense her before long. She knew it for certain. And then she would tell them what they needed to know. They were close, so close now.

 

*

 

“Malfoy!”

Hermione’s voice was a tense hiss.

“Draco! Wake _up!_ ”

This time, the summons was a fraction louder and more urgent. 

The voice penetrating the fog in Draco’s brain was sharp and not very welcome, considering he’d fallen asleep not even two hours before and what sleep he’d had had been restless. But the tone of the voice the second time was such that his eyes snapped open and he remembered with a jolt where he was.

“What?” he mumbled blearily. “What’s the matter?”

As the room came into sharper focus, he saw Hermione sitting straight up in bed, her posture rigid with tension. Silently, she pointed to the corner of the room where the chest of drawers stood. 

It was still there, of course, and he could see it perfectly. Right through the milk-white apparition that was his dead cousin, Lucienne-Odile Malfoi.

Stretching out a hand, palm up, she began to speak, and her voice was eerily high-pitched, soft yet penetrating, seemingly distant and yet lodged deep in his brain, like the haunting underwater song of whales. “Je suis presque trouvé, cher cousin. Cherchez entre le Donjon et la Salle Le Vau. J'ai dormi ici pendant des nuits nombreuses, mais il n'y a pas de repos pour moi.” 

“What did she say?” Hermione had clambered a bit closer, looking to Draco eagerly. 

Draco considered. “She said, ‘I am almost found, dear cousin. Look between the Donjon and the Salle Le Vau. I have slept here many nights, but there is no rest for me.’ Well, that’s not much help, is it?” He turned his gaze back to the apparition, who shimmered in the growing daylight like a fragile bubble close to bursting. “Can you tell us any more?”

The spirit wavered briefly and seemed on the verge of melting into the shafts of light that streamed in through the large window. Then she appeared to gain in strength momentarily, becoming brighter and more substantial. Now they could see the colour of her gown and that of her hair.

“Les briques me masquent et le fer me protège. Mon lit est d'argent and mon nom l'inscrit.” Lifting a fold of her ragged skirt, she gave them a sad little smile. “Je portais soie bleue dans les flammes.”

“Bricks hide me and iron shields me,” Draco translated quickly. “My bed is of silver and my name inscribes it.”

“Wait.” Hermione frowned, her expression quizzical. “There was one more thing, wasn’t there? You know, when she touched her gown.” 

He nodded painfully. “There was, yes. She said, ‘I wore blue silk into the flames.’”

The profound grief and loss bound up in this simple statement seemed almost overwhelming, suddenly. Blue was the colour of loyalty, of the sky and sea; of a young girl’s eyes and of her favourite gown, one that should have been worn on the happiest of occasions, not buried in a mound of ash and soot and scattered fragments of bone.

And then, as the pale light of earliest morning turned golden with the rising sun, Lucienne vanished. Only the scent of roses remained. 

Well, that was it for sleeping. It was only seven AM, but neither Draco nor Hermione felt the slightest inclination to return to bed. There was far too much to think about, now that they’d had another visitation. It was the first one they’d experienced together, and that made it very different. 

“I can’t believe she actually spoke this time,” Hermione mused, drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. “But you’ve heard her before this, right?”

Draco nodded. “I have, yeah. But not often. In fact, up to now, the only times were in dreams I had. Never during an actual manifestation.”

“Hmm.” Hermione frowned. “And what she said was a bit of a riddle, wasn’t it. What did you make of it?”

“Well, let’s see,” he replied, coming to sit alongside her on the bed. “She said something about where we need to look, though it wasn’t exactly helpful. It does narrow our search down, but not by much, considering it covers what’s still a fairly large area of the old Louvre. She also said something about bricks and iron. Pretty vague too, if you ask me.”

“ ‘Bricks hide me,’ she said. And ‘iron shields me.’ Isn’t that right?” Hermione rested her chin on her hands, brows furrowed in concentration. “Clearly her remains are walled up somewhere. And in... what was it she said? Something about her bed being made –”

“Of silver,” Draco finished. “With her name on it. Yeah.”

“So...” Hermione considered for a moment. “Maybe her remains are in some sort of box. You know, like a keepsake box. A silver one. But where? And why? She was executed as a traitor. How would her remains even have been recovered from where she died, first off? And who recovered them? And why would they have been smuggled into the castle keep, of all places?”

“No clue. All I know is, if she’s somewhere between the Donjon and the Salle Le Vau, then there’s a chance she could even be in the newer section of the castle that was added on, starting in...” 

Jumping off the bed, he hurried to find his jacket, rummaging in the pocket for a brochure he’d picked up the day before. Quickly flipping through it, he found what he’d been looking for and stabbed at the passage with his index finger. “Right, here we go. It was 1527, the same year she died.”

“Oh yes! I remember,” Hermione chimed in. “The original fortress was demolished so that a whole new palace could be built on the foundations of the old keep. But do we know when the renovations were started, exactly?”

Draco glanced quickly at the brochure. “It says June. Lucienne died in March. So the work began three months later. You know, according to this” – he held up the brochure, his eyes betraying his growing frustration – “between the original 12th-century construction and what was built four hundred years later, there was another major renovation as well.”

“That’s right.” She pressed her palms together, tapping her bottom lip thoughtfully with the tips of her fingers. “That’s when Charles V turned the keep into a luxury residence. Who knows, maybe they’ve excavated from that period as well. Really, she could be anywhere.”

“Exactly. And that’s the problem. The fact is, we don’t even know whether her remains were moved at some point or if they’re still in their original hiding place, wherever that was. If only we had the full story. Instead, we’re stuck playing fucking Twenty Questions!”

Hermione leaned closer, laying a hand on Draco’s arm. “You know what? I think it’s just possible that the clues will fall into place once we’re actually there. We just need to keep an open mind, look with our brains as well as our eyes.”

The hotel’s breakfast room provided them with a quick meal of hot chocolate and baguettes slathered in butter and jam, and before long, they were off once again, on foot this time. The Louvre was not far, a straight walk along the colourful Avenue de l’Opéra. Not that either of them had eyes for their surroundings at this point. All they could see was the imposing palace that was the Louvre, looming like a beacon in the distance. Somewhere in its subterranean interior was the key to everything.

 

*

 

“Right,” Draco murmured, pulling his Glamoured Spirit Searcher out of his rucksack and holding it close. “The corridor connecting the Donjon to the Salle St Louis begins there.” He indicated an opening leading from the circular keep into a narrow, tunnel-like passage. He gave Hermione a grim smile. “Shall we?”

She nodded silently, her face impassive. What they might find was anybody’s guess at this point. After the terrible scare of the previous day, she wasn’t entirely sure if she hoped they would fail or succeed.

Once they’d entered the low-ceilinged passage, Draco stopped and put a finger to his lips. “Time to cast the Shield Charm. I’ll –”

“No,” Hermione found herself saying, gathering her courage in hopes of banishing the memories. “Let me. Please.”

Draco raised an eyebrow in surprise, but acquiesced, stepping back a pace.

“I’ll just do the lot, shall I?” she asked, pulling out her wand with a furtive glance to the left and right. There was nobody about and the place was as silent as a tomb.

“Good thinking. Can’t be too careful,” he answered. 

“ _Protego Maxima. Fianto Duri. Repello Inimicum_ ,” she whispered, raising her wand and inscribing an arc that flashed silver in the dim light of the tunnel as she said the familiar spell words. As in the past, a transparent wall seemed to rise up instantly on all sides of them like a protective bubble, shimmering for a moment in the residue of light from her wand, and then melting into the air. The barrier was there but completely invisible. And impenetrable, Hermione found herself hoping fervently. “What happens if those horrid ghosts, those Inquisitors, try to break through the shield?”

Draco shrugged. “We can only hope they won’t be able to. I’m more worried about what will happen if a Muggle happens to get too close. We can’t have people disintegrating right in the middle of the Louvre!”

“Or at all,” Hermione added pointedly.

“Or at all,” he amended. “We’ll just have to keep our wits about us and keep moving. Now...” He paused. “Bricks and iron... Come on, Granger. Let’s get cracking. We’ve a lot of area to cover.”

The passage connecting the Donjon to the adjacent Salle St Louis was curved and its ceiling low, claustrophobically so, but the walls, all stone, were unbroken. There was no evidence of anything made of iron anywhere. On the one hand, this was something of a relief. It meant that they could cut to the chase, as it were, making their time far more productive. One whole area eliminated from consideration, two to go.

The Salle St Louis was a very large, open area composed of stone walls and columns that had once supported the original vaulted ceiling. That ceiling was no more, sadly. But the columns and the attached vaulting and decorative corbels remained. 

And there was something else.

“Look!” Hermione breathed. There, along one wall, was a secondary passage, dimly lit and fronted by iron bars. 

It was the dungeon, a grim reminder of the sad and very hard fates of many over the long years that the castle existed as a fortress. 

They moved closer for a better look. What had appeared on first glance to be a single, large cell turned out to be a passage with a winding stone staircase leading to cells above and below and separated from the main hall by a grid of unrelenting iron bars. 

“Do you suppose this might be it? Here’s the iron,” Hermione noted, pointing. 

“There’s no brick. She said brick, didn’t she.” Draco’s voice was flat with disappointment. “Creepy, though, isn’t it. She was probably kept here before they put her to death.”

It was indeed. Hermione couldn’t help shuddering as she imagined what must have taken place beyond the confinement of the iron bars. Torture, beatings, starvation, disease, and worst of all, the slow, grinding inexorability of sentences that would never be lifted and lives inevitably forgotten behind thick, stone prison walls. Lost souls crumbling into dust and perpetual obscurity.

“It’s horrifying,” she said quietly. “I’m so sorry. This must be dreadful for you to see, imagining what she must have endured.”

His silence was answer enough. She could see the pain in his eyes as he gazed at the stones and ironwork bathed in candlelight and deep shadows, and it wasn’t just for his long-dead cousin. There was another prison far away from here, and it had held his father once. Lucius Malfoy had returned home an empty, broken shell of the man he’d once been. He’d lost far more than just time out of his life. Whoever had been thrown into this prison had certainly not fared any better and had probably fared much worse.

Tentatively, Hermione touched his shoulder. “Come on, Malfoy. We’re far from done. Look over there.”

Along the long wall adjacent to the prison entrance, there was a cavernous stone hearth. 

“That can’t be the same age as the rest of what’s in here, can it?” she wondered.

Draco shook his head, a tiny frisson of excitement flaring in his belly now. “No. You’re right. I expect it dates from the 14th-century renovations. I read that this area was used as a Great Hall then, or one of them, anyway. It housed the King’s Guard when they were doing his service – served as a place for them to eat and bed down.”

Hermione grabbed his hand and pulled at him. “Come on! Let’s go have a better look!”

As they neared the hearth, however, a queer sensation began to press at them. It felt as if the protective bubble surrounding them were rippling, as if it were being pushed and pulled, battered by invisible hands that were very strong and persistent. And angry. The fury being manifested was a force unto itself, intensifying as the shield proved impenetrable.

“Oh gods, it’s them! It must be!” she quailed, clutching Draco’s arm and feeling as if her legs had turned to jelly. 

“Hold on to me, Granger!” Draco growled, his voice tense with the strain of staving the spirits off and moving himself and Hermione forward at the same time. “They won’t break through, I promise! We just need to get to the fireplace! That must be where she is; otherwise, they wouldn’t be trying so hard to stop us!”

It was like being caught in a very powerful windstorm. With every step they took, they were being pushed back and lost a bit more ground. All the while, there was the sensation of being grabbed and beaten as if through thick rubber, and now a sound accompanied the physical sensations, an infuriated, relentless whining such as that made by a swarm of hornets on the attack. 

“Draco!” Hermione turned to him, utterly panic-stricken as something suddenly occurred to her. “If we do find Lucienne’s bones, how are we going to get them without making an opening in the shield? The spirits will be able to reach us! They’ll –”

“We’ll just have to work fast, I reckon!” He grunted as he repelled a particularly vicious thrust through the shield wall. “If we can see and feel their attempts to break through, I suspect they can see when we push back. One of us will distract them while the other will grab what we came for.” 

That made a sort of sense, and for a while at least, Hermione felt somewhat reassured. There wasn’t much time to think about it one way or the other, however. Her attention was needed elsewhere.

The hearth was massive, standing at least six feet high and eight feet across. The exterior had been built of stone, but the interior was made of brick in a herringbone pattern. In the centre of the back wall, there was an imposing fireback with the king’s coat of arms carved into its surface.

It was made of solid iron.

_Bricks hide me, iron shields me..._

As they neared it, the tiny light on the Spirit Searcher began to pulsate a bright green. And then the blinking stopped and the light shone steady and true. Lucienne was here. All they needed to do was find her.

“This is it, Granger! Come on!” Draco gritted, clutching the Spirit Searcher in one hand and beating off their invisible attackers with the other. “Hurry up and move that fireback, see what’s behind it!”

Frightened beyond words, Hermione obeyed. The fireback was heavy, and at first, she didn’t think she could budge it even an inch. And then, surprisingly, there was a small, scraping sound on the floor of the hearth, and the 600-year-old fireback shifted a hairsbreadth. But it was nowhere near enough. Huffing with the exertion and desperate now, she opened her mouth, “ _Mobiliarbus_ ” on the tip of her tongue, though they had agreed to avoid using magic if at all possible in such a public place. But in that moment, it was as if a ghostly hand had reached out to help her, because suddenly, the fireback slid six inches to the right, as easily as if it were moving through butter. 

“Trouvez-moi.” The girl’s voice was a light whisper tickling her ear. “S’il vous plaît, trouvez moi. Je suis ici.” (“Find me. Please find me. I am here.”)

The exposed space behind the fireback now revealed two bricks whose mortar appeared to have mostly disintegrated. There was space between them, enough that Hermione could wiggle them, but only a bit. Frantically, she worked at them but they refused to budge. A cursory glance over her shoulder revealed no strangers nearby. “ _Deletrius!_ ” she breathed, the incantation a prayer now as much as a spell, and at once, the bricks crumbled to dust. In the dark space behind them, there was a small box. Reaching in, she grabbed it, her heart in her throat, and then hugged it to her chest.

Instantly, the power of the entities trying to break the shield was shattered and they were gone. It was over. The box and its contents were safe.

On the other hand, Draco and Hermione no longer were. The museum guard who happened to be passing at the far end of the hall at that precise moment was now striding up to them at quite a good clip, utterly irate and turning dangerously red in the face, while a middle-aged German couple and two Japanese students who had just strolled in, cameras in hand, stood there gaping.

“Attention! Qu’est-ce que vous faites? Arrêtez!” the astonished guard shouted, waving his hands. (“Hey! What are you doing? Stop!”)

It was precisely the scenario Draco had hoped to avoid. But magic was the only option now. It would have to be a classic one-two punch.

He spun around, wand out.

“ _Immobilus!_ ” and then, with a second, grand sweep of his wand arm, “ _Obliviate!_ ” 

Four tourists and a museum guard were now frozen in place like pieces on a chessboard, completely bereft of the memory of what they had just seen. They would stay immobilised just long enough for Hermione and Draco to make their escape. Their recollection of what they’d witnessed, however, would never return.

“Nice one!” Hermione muttered, getting to her feet and patting her jacket to be sure the precious box was safely stowed there.

“Thanks.” Draco flashed her a wry smile. “Time to get our arses the hell out of here, I think.”

 

*

 

“Merlin, Granger, did you see that guard’s face? He was fucking _livid!_ ”

They had fled to the relative safety of the Tuileries, and now they took refuge behind a thick clump of trees, out of breath. But it was more from hysterical laughter – equal parts relief, giddiness and seriously frayed nerves – than exertion. 

“What about those tourists! Can you imagine how we must have looked to them? I bet they thought we were criminals! Not to mention you seeming completely spastic, flailing at the air!” Hermione leaned back against a tree and sighed, wiping a tear from her eye. “I don’t know why I’m laughing. It’s really not funny!”

“Of course it is. It’s bloody hilarious.” Still chuckling, Draco slipped the glasses off to wipe his own eyes. “I’d say today was a smashing success all round. Mission accomplished, first off. Second, we stopped the Inquisitors. And third, despite getting caught, nobody’s the wiser.”

“Thanks to you!” Hermione retorted fervently. “Five Muggles all in one go! You wield a pretty mean wand, Malfoy!”

“Thanks!” he replied with a cocky little grin. “You’re not so bad yourself. I really thought you’d lose your nerve when the ghosts were gaining on us and you had to find the box in a hurry. But you didn’t. The truth is… well… I couldn’t have done it without you. Reckon Lucienne knew what she was about, showing herself to you!” He grinned again, this time rather shyly. “Thanks… Hermione.”

Hermione couldn’t help blushing with pleasure. “I’m just glad I could help. Talking about the box, though… don’t you want to examine it? We haven’t had a proper look at it yet!”

Draco nodded eagerly. “Absolutely. Let’s have it, then.” 

Hermione reached into her jacket pocket and drew out the box, handing it to him. Made of silver, it was small and dainty, studded with clusters of tiny gemstones that swirled over its surface like stars in the night sky. Although it was severely tarnished now, it wasn’t difficult to imagine how beautiful it must have looked once, when it held a young girl’s favourite piece of jewellery.

“It’s locked!” Draco muttered, tugging on the lid. Making sure nobody was in sight, he drew out his wand, murmuring, “ _Alohomora!_ "

There was a faint, rusty _click_ , and then, very carefully, he raised the lid. Only two items remained in the box now. One was a delicate necklace of silver-encrusted moonstones. The other was a small cloth sack tied with a narrow, rough-cut piece of leather. 

“Look!” Hermione breathed, pointing.

Worked into the inside of the lid, there was an inscription, still perfectly legible, albeit blackened with age:

 _Á Lucienne, avec mon amour toujours. Ton Tristan._ (To Lucienne, with my love always. Your Tristan)

Another piece of the puzzle that was Lucienne’s story had now fallen into place. But there was no time to dwell on it, poignant though such a message was. Something more important required their more immediate attention. With great care, Draco untied the leather cord and opened the sack. Inside were fine, grey ashes and fragments of very white bone. And a tiny, frayed piece of blue silk.

Lucienne.

They had found her. And now that they had – now that the quest was nearly finished – it was almost more than Hermione could bear to see a life that had barely begun now reduced to a sack of ash and bone, a small square of silk, a necklace, and a silver box. Turning away, her eyes filled with tears that she didn’t try to stop and couldn’t hide. When at last she did look up, swallowing hard in an effort to regain her composure, she saw that Draco’s eyes were reddened and watery, although he tried quite manfully to appear stoic. The attempt was a failure and he knew it.

“Fuck,” he said very quietly, and then, “ _Fuck._ ”

Hermione nodded. That about summed it up.

“What now?” she asked, after a couple of moments. 

“Tomorrow, we go to my family’s estate – well, former estate. It’s a museum now, run by Muggles – and we bury Lucienne. We say goodbye.”

“And after that?”

“Home, I reckon.” He cast a quick glance at her, searching her face. “What about you, then? Will you still be on holiday?” 

“Yes, I’m here until Friday.” She knew she ought to be happy about the two additional days, but suddenly, the prospect no longer held much appeal. 

Both of them fell silent. The celebratory mood had passed.

 

*

 

The decision to hire a car and drive to Chantilly surprised Hermione. She had her driver’s licence and was eligible and willing to drive the car that Draco had hired for the day, but she did wonder about his reasons for such a choice.

“From what you say,” she remarked over breakfast the next morning, “it’ll take us about an hour to get there by car. That’s two hours of driving. Plus of course there’s the cost of the petrol, not to mention the hire itself.”

At this, he waved a dismissive hand. “Insignificant.”

“And,” she continued, undeterred, “from what you’ve told me, it’s a pretty safe bet that we could Apparate there without being seen. The grounds are extensive and there is a dense wood fairly far from the main house. We could come and go without anyone noticing.”

Draco ignored this. “You know," he mused, his tone nonchalant, "for so much of my life, I wanted nothing to do with anything Muggle. I now believe that was a mistake. Yeah, we have the ability to travel between places almost instantaneously and that’s fantastic, but I ask you, where’s the chance to see the countryside, smell the roses?”

Hermione let out an amused snort. “I hardly think we’ll be smelling any roses on the highway. More like clouds of petrol fumes. And have you noticed how crazy French drivers are? You _are_ joking about all this, right?”

In fact, he wasn’t. And so, later that morning, they arranged for a car hire complete with GPS and a real map, since Draco was clearly distrustful of the technology behind a little black box that jabbered at him continuously. How did it know where it was going? Couldn’t it make a mistake? Hermione gave up trying to explain and simply took the map and the car keys, seating herself in the driver’s seat with a sigh.

The drive proved uneventful, beyond the predictions Hermione had made. Not surprisingly, they turned out to be true, right down to one obnoxious and extremely foolhardy driver in particular, going at nearly 100 miles per hour and weaving in and out of the lanes like a “bloody psycho,” according to Draco. The air conditioning wasn’t working properly, so it became a choice between enduring a stuffy car or opening the windows to all the noise and pollution of a busy highway.

Nevertheless, even with all these irritations, Draco remained remarkably sanguine throughout. Not at all what Hermione would have expected, given his exacting standards about virtually everything. He made light conversation, sharing observations about Paris and the countryside they were passing through, and reminiscing about their Hogwarts days, making certain to stick to carefully neutral ground.

They had just finished talking about something that Peeves had done when he stretched, sighing audibly. And then he eyed Hermione, seeming to come to a decision.

“Merlin,” he began, clearing his throat. “That was a long time ago, wasn’t it! Third year. We were thirteen. Half our lives ago now. Hard to credit.”

Hermione murmured her assent, her eyes on the road. Distracted by the traffic, she'd allowed the conversation to flow over her head to a certain degree.

“Bunch of little wankers we were back then. Well, not you. I didn’t mean you. Me, though. And my friends.”

Hermione turned to glance at Draco, her expression quizzical. “What exactly are you trying to say, Malfoy?”

Now Draco looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Just that... well... I’ve changed, is all. Grown up. I don’t believe all that rubbish anymore. Stopped believing it a long time ago. And... well... I’m sorry for how I treated you. I was an arse.”

“Yes. You were,” she agreed. “And an awful bully. You were incredibly mean sometimes.”

“Okay, okay, you don’t have to agree quite so enthusiastically! I’m already admitting to it!” he exclaimed, his face darkening.

“Don’t be defensive,” Hermione said primly. 

Draco opened his mouth, ready to launch a retort, and then his frown slowly relaxed into a small, crooked grin. “Yeah, you’re right. Anyway, I just wanted you to know. For the record.”

“For the record.” She nodded, fighting a tiny smile of her own. “Okay. Duly noted.”

There was a reflective silence for the remainder of the drive. Before long, they arrived at the Chateau de Chantilly.

Hermione parked the car and they walked past vast, manmade bodies of water, or “water mirrors,” on their way to the chateau, which rose up in magisterial splendour from the shimmering waters that surrounded it on three out of four sides. 

“Fucking hell,” Draco breathed, staring at the enormity and grandeur of the structure. 

“It’s amazing,” Hermione agreed, completely dazzled herself, and then she looked at him in surprise. “Wait. Haven’t you ever been here before?”

He shook his head. “No. This was a different branch of the family, first off. When Armand Malfoi left France for England in the 11th century, the family split. His brother Etienne stayed behind and founded his own line. It was one of his descendants, Richard, who built the first chateau on this site.”

At Hermione’s questioning glance, he continued. “Oh, this house isn’t the one Lucienne would have grown up in. That one was razed to the ground during the French Revolution. And then, not long after that, the estate passed out of the family’s hands altogether. A load of bad debts needing to be settled, so the story goes. The land was sold to Muggles, who eventually built the house you see now, and it’s been a public museum since the 1880s. Altogether, the estate has been in Muggle hands for close to two hundred years. That’s the main reason I haven’t ever come before this.”

“I see! Gosh, that’s quite a story. But what about all the valuables the family must have had? Were they all destroyed along with the first house?”

“No. My relations saw the writing on the wall. They knew they’d be targeted as one of the oldest and wealthiest families of the French nobility, Muggle or magical. They saved everything of value – paintings, sculptures, silver, jewellery, tapestries, furniture, books. Magicked away the lot and hid it, and then they escaped, just barely with their heads! 

“Some time after that, as I said, they sold the estate. When it was eventually turned into a museum many years later, the family sold a number of pieces back with the proviso that they be properly cared for and maintained. It was important to them that the Malfoi heritage not be obscured or forgotten. Quite frankly, they also needed the money, even then.”

“Proud people, your family,” Hermione murmured. 

“Proud, yes, and canny too,” Draco agreed. “They knew how to turn a deal.” 

By this time, they had reached the front entrance of the chateau. Stepping inside, they paid for their tickets and joined a formal tour that was just getting started. The Grand Apartments offered one room after the next of incredible grandeur and opulence: murals, tapestries, panels and ornately decorated furniture and woodwork, huge chandeliers and mirrors, gilding everywhere. Long, broad corridors were filled with additional mirrors, frescoes and murals, and there were bedrooms, a boudoir, antechambers and a music room, all charming and lavishly appointed. 

And then there were the galleries, long hallways of statuary and paintings, some of them landscapes and some portraits. As Draco and Hermione passed the portraits, there was a susurration that none of the other visitors appeared to notice, an eerie, soft whispering seeming to emanate from within certain of the gilded frames, as though the portraits themselves were taking notice of an important visitor, someone they recognised.

Shivering slightly, Hermione gazed at the stern faces staring down at them. Had that one turned her head to murmur to her neighbour? Had there been a nod, a pursing of the lips, a movement of the eyes? She looked over at Draco, whose expression was carefully impassive. But his eyes were alive with barely concealed nervous excitement. He knew them, too.

At the end of the long portrait gallery, he stopped dead. Reaching out to grab Hermione’s hand, he pulled her closer, gesturing with a tilt of his head towards a large, full-length portrait. 

"Lucienne!” he whispered.

There on the wall, as big as life, was the portrait of a young girl of about sixteen or seventeen. Holding the leash of a small, white dog sitting at her feet, she struck a relaxed pose, her head turned to one side and a slight smile lifting the corners of her mouth. Her hair, a richly burnished red-gold, was loosely pulled back, tendrils curling gently on either side of her face, and wound into a braided bun at the back, below which a cascade of luxuriant curls flowed freely. Woven into her hair were tiny pearls, miniature rosebuds, and strands of silver. She wore a gown of richest sapphire blue that fell from a fitted bodice to sweeping skirts at her feet, its long, graceful sleeves decorated with layers of peacock feathers. Around her neck was a strand of silver-encrusted moonstones.

For a moment, neither of them could move. This was the girl Lucienne had been in life, before the tragically misplaced accusations of the small-minded and suspicious within her own community had destroyed her. Here she was, on the brink of full womanhood, waiting to embrace life and all it had to offer, joys she would never know.

No words were said, but as they stood there, Hermione reached for Draco’s hand. They stayed that way for what seemed a very long time.

At last, Draco shook himself out of his reverie. 

“Let’s do what we came here for,” he said quietly. “Come on.”

He pulled out a map of the grounds and they studied it. But it didn’t take long before both knew instinctively where Lucienne’s remains should be laid to rest.

The rose garden.

Finding a spot was easy. They would bury her remains beneath one of the more luxuriant rose bushes – a white one, Hermione suggested, for purity – and leave her to become one with the garden that she had so loved in life.

Making sure that nobody was around, Draco crouched down, Hermione alongside him, and hollowed out a small hole in the ground beneath the bush. Together, they emptied the contents of the cloth sack into the hole, covering it up carefully with the loose soil. Then Draco tucked the small box with its remaining, and very precious, contents safely away inside his jacket. 

“Sleep well, Lucienne,” he whispered. “May you find true rest now.”

“Merci, cher cousin. Vous m'avez sauvé et m'a ramené à la maison à la fin.” 

Both their heads snapped up in surprise to see a smiling Lucienne, looking as she had in the portrait: healthy, whole, and beautiful. By her side, his hand in hers, was a tall, handsome young man in soldier’s dress. 

Draco quickly began to translate. “She said, ‘Thank you, dear cousin. You have saved me and brought me home at last.’”

“C'était Tristan qui a réuni mes cendres et les os et les a caché dans le mur.” 

“‘It was Tristan who gathered my ashes and bones and hid them in the wall,’” he murmured, his eyes never leaving the apparitions.

“Tristan!" _The name in the inscription._ Hermione was nearly breathless with excitement as she gazed at the pale entity standing alongside Lucienne. "So the box was from _him_ , and I'd bet anything the necklace was, too. They must have been lovers! _He_ was the Muggle she was caught with!" 

"And not just a Muggle, but a soldier in the King’s Guard, no less!" Draco shook his head in amazement and let out a low whistle. “Bloody hell!”

"Yes, and somehow," she went on, "Lucienne must have found a way to get him the jewel box after she was arrested! Maybe she told him where to find it, or–" 

“Maybe she had it with her in the dungeon all along, to safeguard her necklace." Draco spoke quietly too, not wanting to disturb the spirits who still lingered, their ethereal forms shimmering in the late-afternoon sunlight. "It was small enough that she could have Transfigured it, even. So yeah, she must have smuggled it to him just before her death, or maybe she told him where he'd find it in her cell afterwards. And then, he must have used it to hide her remains, wanting to keep them safe. He couldn’t have known that soon after, the old keep would be razed to make way for a new palace. He'd have had no way of retrieving them after that.”

Their musings were interrupted, then, by the sound of a young girl's voice. Lucienne and Tristan were growing less and less distinct. 

"Au revoir, cher cousin, et adieu à votre belle dame. S'il vous plait... Ne m'oubliez pas... racontez mon histoire...” (“Goodbye, dearest cousin, and goodbye to your beautiful lady. Please... do not forget me... tell my story...”)

And with those words, Lucienne and her lover disappeared, melting into the air and leaving no trace – except for a handful of white rose petals, fragrant and quite perfect, fluttering to the ground around the base of the bare bush, a preview of the glory that would be the garden in two months’ time and a remembrance that would never fade. 

Hermione picked up the enchanted petals and brought them to her nose. “They smell so lovely.”

“I expect they always will. Take them. She wanted us to have them.” Draco got to his feet with a deep sigh. “Reckon we’re done here, what do you say, Granger?”

“I suppose we are,” she murmured. “Let’s go.”

 

*

 

The drive back to Paris was a somber and quiet one, with much to think about and digest. There was profound sadness, still, but tempering that was a powerful sense of joy and release. 

They had driven nearly the whole way back before Draco spoke, and his tone seemed curiously colourless and matter-of-fact. “Reckon I’ll be heading back tonight, then.”

Hermione cast a quick, sidelong glance at him. “Must you?” she said without thinking and then blushed.

“I’ve already checked out of my hotel,” he replied, and now his mouth twitched with the beginnings of a smile. “And you know what April in Paris is like. Probably not a vacant room to be had anywhere.”

“Well… I do have the divan. You’re welcome to use that, if you like. Assuming you want to stay, that is.” Her tone was carefully nonchalant, her eyes trained on the road ahead. But she could feel him looking, and her blush deepened.

Draco sighed, a wicked glint in his eyes now. “I could do, I suppose, but... would you _really_ make me sleep on that thing again?” 

Concentrating on the road was becoming a real challenge now. “Hmm... Those eaves _are_ pretty sharp. I wouldn’t want you to hurt your head again.”

“Yeah, you know, it’s still rather sore from the other night.” He rubbed the top of his head dramatically, just to emphasise the point. “Tell you what, Granger. Let’s discuss my injuries and what to do about them over dinner, shall we? I know a little place that does an excellent steak au poivre.”

It was an offer Hermione couldn’t refuse. She gave him a brilliant smile in return.

“Deal.”

 

 

 

FIN


	2. Chapter 2

”Saving Mr.Malfoy, or A Life in The Ruins” Photo Album

It never ceases to amaze me that there are actually places out there that look precisely the way I’ve already imagined them in my mind’s eye. When I am lucky enough to find photos of those places, it’s a wonderful piece of serendipity.

In the case of the Hotel Gaillon Opéra, I chose it because I’ve stayed there with my family and it fit the bill perfectly. (And yes, the lift really is absurdly narrow and clunky!)

Hotel Gaillon Opéra

 

[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/44736729-f59c-43ff-9a0f-052f299599b2.jpg.html)

[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/windingstaircase.jpg.html)  
The winding staircase

 

[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/Hermionesroom.jpg.html)  
Hermione’s room on the top floor

 

[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/image_hotel_externalview_2.jpg.html)  
The view from Hermione’s room

 

 

[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/15159425.jpg.html)  
Café Daguerre, Place Denfert-Rochereau, where Hermione first discovers Draco 

 

Les Catacombes de Paris

 

[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/95263878zmuqvyXUDSC00568EntrancetolesCatacombs.jpg.html)  
Entrance, Paris Catacombes

 

[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/skull.jpg.html) [](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/800px-Djtox_Catacombes_de_Paris.jpg.html)

 

The Medieval Louvre

 

[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/0d-louvre-1.jpg.html)  
Artist’s rendering of the original 12th-century fortress

 

[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/modelMedievalLouvre-1.jpg.html)  
Model of the original castle keep, the foundations of which still remain

 

[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/overviewMedievallouvre_charles_v_small.jpg.html)  
Aerial view

 

[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/mapMedievalLouvre-1.jpg.html)  
Visitors’ map

 

[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/Louvre_medieval_foundations_flickr.jpg.html)  
Remaining foundations of the old castle keep

 

[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/Louvre_medieval_escalier.jpg.html)

 

Salle St Louis, Medieval Louvre

 

[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/Salle_saint_louis_louvre_medieval-1.jpg.html)[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/8270766125_75586b51f7_o-1.jpg.html)[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/46037696.jpg.html)[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/SalleBasseorSalledestLouis.jpg.html)[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/2665837410_2b9a5229d5.jpg.html)  
Dungeon

 

[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/39150161.jpg.html)  
Detail of vaulted column with corbels

 

[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/39150160.jpg.html)  
Column with vaulting

 

[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/01-Salle-Saint-Louis--5-.jpg.html)

[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/mill-salon-12.jpg.html)  
14th-century hearth with fireback, France

 

[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/images-2.jpeg.html)  
15th-century hearth with fireback, France

 

[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/b4a030ef-f2ab-4058-bc8f-4ae8cd0032c7.jpg.html)  
period fireback, France (courtesy Marc Maison)

 

[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/IMG781.jpg.html)  
17th-century Dutch fireback

 

L’Epi d’Or (The Golden Ear, as in an ear of corn)

 

[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/LEpidOrexterior.jpg.html) [](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/LEpidOr-1.jpg.html) [](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/ardoise.jpg.html)

 

 

Le Chateau de Chantilly

 

[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/800px-Chateau_de_Chantilly_gardenbycraigpatik.jpg.html)  
Photo by Craig Patik

 

[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/Chateau_de_Chantilly_Galerie_de_Monsieur_le_Prince-2.jpg.html)[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/tumblr_m68x2uVXJG1r1dcs8o1_1280.jpg.html)[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/Petitsappartements-PetitesingeriecopyMarinaRouyer.jpeg.html)[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/Chateau_de_Chantilly__Les_Appartements_des_princes_de_Cond_.jpg.html)[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/GrandeSingerieprisele05-02-2008-formatJPEG-copyrightHermineCleacuteret30MD-1.jpg.html)[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/images.jpeg.html)[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/chateau-de-chantilly-library.jpg.html)[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/800px-Chateau_de_Chantilly_FRA_010byignis.jpg.html)  
Photo by Ignis

 

[ ](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/chateaudechantillytravel6.jpg.html)  


As I wrote, Lucienne became very real to me. Without a doubt, there were countless young women like her who met with a terrible fate at the hands of sternly judgmental men; such people were fanatical about enforcing the strict religious and/or social mores of the time, fueled by ignorance, superstition, misinformation, hysteria, and fear of what they didn't understand. It wasn't much of a leap to imagine that such a horrific thing could have happened within the wizarding community as well. JKR was clearly paralleling the rise of fascism in all its hateful forms in the rise to power of Voldemort and his followers. Prejudice, ignorance, fear, and scapegoating are what drive the 16th-century French persecutions in my story, just as they do in Voldemort's rise in canon.

Anyway, Lucienne has become very dear to my heart. I like to think that Draco will eventually given Hermione both the box and the necklace at a future point in their relationship. It seems most appropriate, and I think Lucienne will definitely approve.

 

 

 

  
[](http://s136.photobucket.com/user/miriamele3/media/Dramione%20story%20photos/Lucienne.jpg.html)  
Lucienne-Odile Malfoi, exactly as I imagine her  


 

Here is Lucienne's backstory as I envision it:

Born in 1509, Lucienne-Odile Malfoi is the youngest child of the wealthy and influential old French pureblood family, the Malfois. At the age of seventeen, she becomes involved with Tristan, a soldier in the King’s Guard and a Muggle. They have a love affair although their relationship is strictly forbidden, not only because Tristan is a Muggle but also because any sexual relationship between a young, unmarried woman and a man is considered sinful, particularly by strict pureblood standards. However, they are deeply in love and plan to run away and elope. He gives her a necklace of moonstones in a beautiful silver box as a token of their promise to each other and of his fidelity.

Their illicit relationship develops against a backdrop of growing suspicion and persecution of people, women in particular, for witchcraft. As a result, the wizarding community becomes increasingly paranoid about being discovered, exposed, and targeted. Nobody is above suspicion, and all interactions between wizards/witches and Muggles are subject to the most harsh scrutiny. The love affair between Lucienne and Tristan is eventually discovered, and in this climate of heightened fear and paranoia, it’s clear that she is in imminent danger of being arrested and charged with sinfully consorting with Muggles, thus endangering the wizarding community.

Desperately, Lucienne tells Tristan that if the worst happens, assuming she is arrested and accused, he must gather her remains and put them somewhere safe. He solemnly promises that he will. When she is incarcerated, she is still wearing the beloved necklace and has the small, silver jewel box with her, which she hides from her jailers by Transfiguring it into something nobody would notice, maybe a loose stone. Just before they arrive to take her to her execution, Tristan manages to come to her cell one last, secret time. She puts the necklace into the box and gives it to him for safekeeping, reminding him of his promise. After her execution, a horrifying spectacle he is forced to witness as a member of the King's Guard, he secretly gathers her ashes and the bits of bone that are left, as well as a scrap of fabric from her dress that he finds in the ashes, and puts everything into the box, sneaking into the castle keep and hiding it in the wall behind the fireback in the hearth. It is far too dangerous for him to be in possession of her ashes and the necklace, and equally dangerous for him to give the box to her family, for whom he is an outsider and a direct threat.

Only a few months later, Francois I decides to build a more splendid palace on the foundations of the old fortress, so he has the original castle keep razed and construction on the new palace begins. Now it is impossible for Tristan to retrieve Lucienne’s remains. The hearth has been covered over and sealed up by the new construction. And there her remains stay for the next 479 years.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to my most wonderful beta, mister_otter. Not only did she offer her usual brilliant insights and invaluable support, but for this fic, she added her expertise in French. You rock, Carol!
> 
> Thanks to ningloreth for a most evocative and beautifully rendered piece of art! As soon as I saw it, the wheels started turning.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  **Les Catacombes de Paris** http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/02/paris-underground/noe-text
> 
>  
> 
> Take a trip into the Catacombes:  
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzDOhnpDhgY
> 
>  
> 
>  **Le Chateau de Chantilly** I chose the Chateau at Chantilly as the model for the Malfoi estate because it met the story’s requirements perfectly: expansive, opulent, full of priceless art objects, a fascinating and complex history, and not too far from Paris. Read more about it here:  
>  http://www.domainedechantilly.com/en
> 
>  
> 
> Hermione to taxi driver: “Dépêchez-vous, s'il vous plaît!” Hurry up, please!
> 
> Taxi driver: “Toujours à la hâte, les anglais!” Always in a rush, the English!

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my most wonderful beta, mister_otter. Not only did she offer her usual brilliant insights and invaluable support, but for this fic, she added her expertise in French. You rock, Carol!
> 
> Thanks to ningloreth for a most evocative and beautifully rendered piece of art! As soon as I saw it, the wheels started turning.
> 
>  
> 
>    
>    
>    
>  **Les Catacombes de Paris** http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/02/paris-underground/noe-text
> 
>  
> 
> Take a trip into the Catacombes:  
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzDOhnpDhgY
> 
>  
> 
>  **Le Chateau de Chantilly** I chose the Chateau at Chantilly as the model for the Malfoi estate because it met the story’s requirements perfectly: expansive, opulent, full of priceless art objects, a fascinating and complex history, and not too far from Paris. Read more about it here:  
>  http://www.domainedechantilly.com/en
> 
>  
> 
> Hermione to taxi driver: “Dépêchez-vous, s'il vous plaît!” Hurry up, please!
> 
> Taxi driver: “Toujours à la hâte, les anglais!” Always in a rush, the English!


End file.
